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
dismissed him at ten o'clock, saying that she was feeling tired and
wished to go to bed early. Smoking another of Lord Loudwater's favourite
cigars, he walked briskly back to the Castle, more firmly convinced than
ever that every possible step must be taken to prevent any diminution of
the income of a woman of such excellent taste in food and wine. It would
be little short of a crime to discourage the exercise of her fine natural
gift for stimulating the genius of a promising dramatist.

He was not in the habit of going to bed early, and having put on slippers
and an old and comfortable coat, he once more turned to the novel by
Artzybachev. He read two more chapters, smoking a pipe, and then he
became aware that he was thirsty.

He could have mixed himself a whisky and soda then and there, for he had
both in the cupboard, in his sitting-room. But he was a stickler for the
proprieties: he had drunk red wine, Burgundy with his dinner and port
after it, and after red wine brandy is the proper spirit. There would be
brandy in the tantalus in the small dining-room.

He went quietly down the stairs. The big hall, lighted by a single
electric bulb, was very dim, and he took it that, as was their habit, the
servants had already gone to bed. As he came to the bottom of the stairs
the door at the back of the hall opened; James Hutchings came through