"He's an under-gamekeeper, m'lady, and the biggest little beast on the
estate. Everybody hates William Roper," said Elizabeth with conviction.

This was satisfactory as far as it went. The worse her husband's evidence
was the freer it left her to take her own course of action. But it was no
great comfort, for she was but little concerned about the harm he could
do her. Indeed, she was only concerned about the harm he could do Antony.
She returned to her search for a method of preventing that harm during
her dinner, and after her dinner she continued that search without any
success. This injury to Antony, for her the central fact of the
situation, weighed on her spirit more and more heavily.

The longer she pondered it the more harassed she grew. The most fantastic
schemes for baulking her husband and saving Antony came thronging into
her mind. She rose and walked restlessly up and down the room, working
herself up into a veritable fever.

Mr. Manley, having dealt with the letters which had come by the
five-o'clock post, read half a dozen chapters of the last published novel
of Artzybachev with the pleasure he never failed to draw from the works
of that author. Then he dressed and set forth, in a very cheerful spirit,
to dine with Helena Truslove. His cheerful expectations were wholly
fulfilled. She had divined that he was endowed, not only with a romantic
spirit, but with a hearty and discriminating appetite, and was careful to
give him good food and wine and plenty of both. With his coffee he smoked
one of Lord Loudwater's favourite cigars. Expanding naturally, he talked
with spirit and intelligence during dinner, and made love to her after
dinner with even more spirit and intelligence. As a rule, he stayed on
the nights he dined with her till a quarter to eleven. But that night she