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I've gone over this again and again; I'll tell him and let him try what he can. Ludowika's gone from from the fireworks and fiddles and stinking courts; I've got her, and, by God, I'll keep her!" "Talk quietly; you can't shout yourself into this. Are you certain that Mrs. Winscombe really finds the courts stinking? I remember, at first," she stopped.
The flames died away again. Ludowika's manner toward him became self-possessed, even animated; and, Howat thought, preoccupied. She was expectant, with a slightly impatient air, as if she were looking beyond his shoulder. The cause occurred to him in a flash that ignited his anger like a ready-charged explosive. She was waiting, desiring, the return of her husband.
"Really," she said, "they seem very well matched, a good arrangement." She was referring, he realized, to the Winscombes' experience. He never thought of Felix Winscombe as married, Ludowika's husband; he had ceased to think of him at all. The present moment banished everything else.
Never, he had thought, would he be caught, bound, with invidious affections, desires. Howat, a black Penny! He had been subjugated by a force stronger than his rebellious spirit. Suddenly, recalling Ludowika's doubt, he wondered if he would be a subject to it always.
His eyes glittered in a head like a modelling in clay; his arms stirred ceaselessly with weaving fingers. Howat could almost feel Ludowika's hatred striking at him across the bed. He smiled at her, and she faced him with an expression of stony unresponse.
Watlow arrived, and demanded assistance. Howat Penny, in the room where Ludowika's husband lay exhausted in a bed canopied and draped in gay India silk, followed Watlow's actions with a healthy feeling of revulsion.
He whispered an unintelligible period, the pain on his face sharpened, and he released himself from Ludowika's support. She sank back on her chair, gazing at her husband with wide, concerned eyes. Slowly the lines in his face deepened, and a fine, gleaming sweat started out on his brow. His face contorted in a spasm of voiceless suffering, and he drew a stiff hand down either arm.
The flames blazed more brightly, their reflection squirmed over the lacquer frames on the walls, gleamed richly on polished black walnut, and fell across the Turkey floor carpet. It even reached through the pale candle light and flickered on Ludowika's dull red gown, flowered and clouded with blue. She was turned away from him, against the window; her shoulders drooped in an attitude of dejection.
He rose and strode into the farther darkness of the drawing room, returning to the fireplace, marching away again. He saw the white glimmer of Ludowika's arms; he had a vision of her tying the broad ribbon about her rounded, silken knee. "... a man now," his mother's voice was distant, blurred.
One of the Indians, Howat saw, had his arm raised, flourishing a blade; a stupid effigy of savage spleen. Beyond the drapery Ludowika's face was dim and white. It was like an ineffable May moon. Ludowika ... Penny. For the first time Howat thought of her endowed with his name, and it gave him a deep thrill of delight. He repeated it with moving but soundless lips Ludowika Penny.
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