"But first to the Chippendale Room to show you the Renoir," the host said, "newly reframed to better show its colours."

Mr. and Mrs. Cecil led the guests up the marble stairs and into the second floor's living hall. They passed a life-sized portrait of Cornelia, and Serena paused to examine the painting more closely. She shook her head slightly and turned to Pemberton, who lingered beside her as the others walked on.

"I cannot understand how she endured it."

"What?" Pemberton asked.

"So many hours of stillness."

The Pembertons moved down the wide hallway, passing a portrait of Frederick Olmsted and then a Currier & Ives print. Beneath them a burgundy carpet softened their footsteps as the passageway veered left into another row of rooms. In the third, they rejoined the Cecils and the other guests, who huddled around the Renoir.

"It is magnificent," a woman in a blue evening dress and pearls declared. "The darker frame does free the colors more, especially the blue and yellow on the scarf."

Several guests respectfully stepped back to allow an elderly white-haired man to approach. His feet moved with short rigid steps, in the manner of some mechanical toy, a likeness enhanced by the metal band around his head, its dangle of wires connecting the metal to a rubber earpiece. He took a pince-nez from his coat pocket and examined the painting carefully. Someone behind the Pembertons whispered he was a former curator at the National Gallery of Art.

"As pure an example of the French modernist style as we have in this country," the man proclaimed loudly, then stepped back.

Serena leaned close to Pemberton and spoke. Harris, who was close by, chuckled.

"And you, Mrs. Pemberton," Cecil said. "Do you also have an opinion on Renoir?"

Serena gazed at the painting as she spoke.

"He strikes me as a painter for those who know little about painting. I find him timid and sentimental, not unlike the Currier & Ives print in the other room."

Cecil's face colored. He turned to the former curator as if soliciting a rebuttal, but the old man's hearing device had evidently been unable to transmit the exchange.

"I see," Cecil said and clasped his hands before him. "Well, it's time for dinner, so let's make our way downstairs."

They proceeded to the banquet hall. Serena scanned the huge mahogany table and found Webb at the far end near the fireplace. She took Pemberton's hand and led him to seats directly across from the newspaperman, who turned to his wife as the Pembertons sat down.

"Mr. and Mrs. Pemberton," Webb said. "The timber barons I've told you so much about."

Mrs. Webb smiled thinly but did not speak.

The waiters brought lentil and celery soup for the meal's first course, and the room quieted as guests lifted their spoons. When Pemberton finished his soup, he contemplated the Flemish tapestries, the three stone fireplaces and two massive chandeliers, the organ loft in the balcony.

"Envious, Pemberton?" Webb asked.

Pemberton scanned the room a few more moments and shook his head.

"Why would anyone be envious," Serena said. "It's merely a bunch of baubles. Expensive baubles, but of what use?"

"I see it as a rather impressive way to leave one's mark on the world," Webb said, "not so different from the great pharaohs' pyramids."

"There are better ways," Serena said, lifting Pemberton's hand in hers to rub the varnished mahogany. "Right, Pemberton."

Mrs. Webb spoke for the first time.

"Yes, like helping make a national park possible."

"Yet you contradict your husband," Serena said, "leaving something as it is makes no mark at all."

Waiters replaced the soup bowls and saucers with lemon sorbet garnished with mint. Next were filets of fresh-caught bass, the entrée served on bone china with burgundy circles, at the center GWV engraved in gold. Serena lifted a piece of the Bacarrat crystal, held it to the light to better display the initials cut in the glassware.

"Another great mark left upon the world," she said.

An intensifying reverberation came up the hall, and a few moments later a grand piano rolled into view, two workers positioning it just outside the main door. The jazz orchestra's pianist sat down on the bench as the singer stood attentively, waiting for a signal from Mrs. Cecil. The pianist began playing and the singer soon joined in.

One thing's sure and nothing's surer

The rich get richer and the poor get-children.

In the meantime,

In between time

"This song," Mrs. Webb said, "is it a favorite of yours, Mrs. Pemberton?"

"Not really."

"I thought perhaps Mrs. Cecil had it played in your honor. A way of cheering you up after your recent misfortune."

"You show more wit than I'd have thought, Mrs. Webb," Serena said. "I'd assumed you a dullard, like your husband."

"A dullard," Webb said, musing over the word. "I wonder what that makes Harris? He accosted me in the lobby. It seems he bought a salted claim."

"If he'd been forthright with us, we'd have figured it out," Serena said tersely.

"You may be right, Mrs. Pemberton," Webb said, "yet someone obviously counted on the fact that Harris would betray a partnership for his own self-interest."

"I think betrayal is a bit strong for what he did," Pemberton said.

"I don't," Serena said.

Webb waved his hand dismissively.

"Regardless, Colonel Townsend has accepted Albright's offer, and all the documents have been signed. That land was the lynchpin, you know. The whole project could have easily fallen through without it, but now all the parkland on the Tennessee side has been bought."

"Then that should be enough," Pemberton said. "You and your fellows can have the park in Tennessee and leave North Carolina alone."

"I'm afraid it doesn't work that way, Mr. Pemberton," Webb said. "This frees us to turn all our attention to North Carolina. With two-thirds of the proposed park land secured, eminent domain will be even easier to enact, maybe as soon as next fall from what Secretary Albright's told me."

"We'll have every tree in the tract cut down by then," Serena said.

"Perhaps," Webb admitted, "and it may take forty or fifty years before that forest will grow back. But when it does, it will be part of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park."

"Pemberton and I will have logged a whole country by then," Serena said.

For a few moments no one spoke. Pemberton looked for Harris and found him five seats away, laughing at some remark a young lady had made.

"But not this land," Webb replied. "As Cicero noted, ut sementem feceris ita metes."

"Do you know how Cicero died?" Serena said. "It's certainly something a scribbler such as yourself should be familiar with."

"I've heard the story," Webb said. "I'm not easily intimidated, Mrs. Pemberton, if that's your intent."

"I don't know the story," Mrs. Webb said to Serena. "I'd prefer your threats be explained."

"Cicero made himself an enemy of Antony and Fulvia," Serena replied. "He could have left Rome before they came to power, but he believed his golden words could protect him. As your husband is aware, they didn't. Cicero's head was displayed on the Rostra in the Roman Forum, where Fulvia took golden pins from her hair and pierced his tongue. She left them there until the head was tossed out to the dogs."

"A history lesson worth heeding," Pemberton said to Webb.

"No more so than how Antony himself died, Mr. Pemberton," Webb replied.

THE Pembertons did not get back to camp until one A.M., but Galloway was waiting on the front steps.

"We won't need to wake him after all," Serena said when she saw Galloway.