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Updated: June 5, 2025
The head, slightly turned, seemed to regard Ludowika with contentment and interrogation. Howat was conscious of a relief almost as marked as that on the face before him. He had gripped his hands until they ached. The tension in the room, too, seemed spent. He was about to address a reassuring period to Ludowika, when, at a glimpse of her expression, the words died on his lips.
"I thought it would be the pretty little one," he said at the table, with a Quaker disregard of small niceties of feeling; "but, Gilbert, any girl of yours would be more than the young men of the present deserve." It was a difficult conversation for every one but Ludowika and Abner Forsythe. A greater ease appeared after supper.
"In England," she said, "the American provinces are supposed to lie hardly beyond the Channel, but here England seems to be at the other end of the world." Myrtle added, "I'd like it immensely." And Howat thought of Ludowika he thought of her tentatively as Ludowika in the brilliant setting of tropical silks and birds.
"Felix hasn't been well," she remarked presently. "For the first time he has spoken to me of his age. The Maryland affair drags, and that has wearied him." "What does he say about returning?" Howat bluntly asked. "Shortly, he hopes; that is, in another ten days. He says there is a good ship, the Lindamira, by the middle of November." Howat said, "Excellent." Ludowika gazed at him swiftly.
Myrtle had suggested that he was interested in her. What ridiculous nonsense! If his father said anything on that score the other would discover that he was no longer a boy. Besides, such insinuations were a breach of hospitality. How Mrs. Winscombe would laugh at them if she suspected Myrtle's cheap folly. She had asked him to call her Ludowika.
Howat fastened his thoughts on trivial and practical affairs the furnishing of the house where he would take Ludowika, what David and himself intended to do with the iron, and then his last, long talk with his mother.
Through the unaccustomed stir Howat was ceaselessly aware of his feeling for Ludowika; he thought of it with a sense of shame; but it easily drowned all other considerations. He continued to speculate about their future together. Whatever his father might conclude about his personal arrangements, the elder would see that he was necessary to the future of the Penny iron.
An opportunity occurred later. Gilbert Penny had gone down to the Forge store, his wife had disappeared. Ludowika Winscombe and Howat were seated in the drawing room. Only a stand of candles was lit at her elbow; her face floated like a pale and lovely wafer against the billowing shadows of the chamber. The wood on the iron hearth was charring without flame.
He stopped she had shut her eyes. All that was Howat Penny, that was individually sentient, left him with a pounding rush. A faint sound, infinitely far removed, but insistent, penetrated his blurred senses. It grew louder; rain, rain beating on the roof. Voices, somewhere, outside. Ringing blows on an anvil, a blacksmith, and horses waiting. Myrtle Forge. Ludowika. Ludowika Winscombe.
"I'm sure I wish you'd stay away altogether from Myrtle Forge; you've never been anything but a bother." She left abruptly. "Sweet disposition." Howat grinned. "You are seeing family life as it's actually lived." Later his thoughts returned to what she had said about Ludowika Winscombe; he recalled the latter's speech, seated on the doorstep; some stuff about a premonition.
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