A warm light was spilling across the darkening grass from the lower windows of his dwelling, blurring in a dusk under the high leafage of aged maples. The white roses were already in bud on the vine climbing the lattices at his door, and Mariana fixed one in his buttonhole. "Howat," she said, "it isn't as if you were doing it just for Jim, but for a man, any man, really sick. I'll not even ask you to think of it for me. He can sit on the porch and converse with your owls, and poke about over the hills." Howat considered the advisability of attempting to extract a promise from her that she would stay away from Shadrach if James Polder was there. He considered it--very momentarily. The possibility, he asserted to himself, was without any alleviating circumstance. What, in heaven's name, would Charlotte think if, as it well might, the knowledge came to her that Mariana and a Polder--that name she never repeated--a married Polder without his wife, were poking over the hills together at Shadrach? She would have him, Howat, examined for lunacy. Mariana demanded too much. He told her this with the dessert. "It's only the commonest charity," she repeated. Her attack rapidly veered. "Howat," she asked, "do you really dislike Jimmy?" Certainly, he asserted, he--he disapproved of him ... altogether. A headstrong young donkey who had made a shocking mess of his life. He would have to make the best of a bad affair for which no one was to blame but himself. "It is terrific," she agreed, almost cheerfully; and he had a vague sense of having, somehow, delivered himself into her hands. "Perhaps something can still be done," she said, frowning, increasing the dangers of his position. He managed, by a stubborn silence, to check further conversation in that direction; hoping, vainly, that James Polder couldn't come, that Harriet, sensibly, would insist on his accompanying her, or that Byron would solemnly intervene. Mariana, later displaying a letter, dispelled his wishes. "It's been arranged quite easily," she told him. "Harriet will go home. I'd like to be here when he arrives, but I can't. You'll be a dear, Howat, won't you?" she begged. "I'm certain James will give you no trouble. And do send him to bed early." At this he grew satirical, and she laughed in an unaccustomed, nervous manner that upset him surprisingly. Honduras drove her to the station the next morning; and, three days later, deposited James Polder on the worn stone threshold under the climbing rose.