“I had a pretty useful night’s rest myself,” he observed.

Mangan raised his eyeglass and gazed at his host’s throat.

“Cut yourself?” he queried.

“Razor slipped,” Dominey told him.  “You get out of the use of those things in Africa.”

“You’ve managed to give yourself a nasty gash,” Mr. Mangan observed curiously.

“Parkins is going to send up for a new set of safety razors for me,” Dominey announced.  “About our plans for the day,—­I’ve ordered the car for two-thirty this afternoon, if that suits you.  We can look around the place quietly this morning.  Mr. Johnson is sleeping over at a farmhouse near here.  We shall pick him up en route.  And I have told Lees, the bailiff, to come with us too.”

Mr. Mangan nodded his approval.

“Upon my word,” he confessed, “it will be a joy to me to go and see some of these fellows without having to put ’em off about repairs and that sort of thing.  Johnson has had the worst of it, poor chap, but there are one or two of them took it into their heads to come up to London and worry me at the office.”

“I intend that there shall be no more dissatisfaction amongst my tenants.”

Mr. Mangan set off for another prowl towards the sideboard.

“Satisfied tenants you never will get in Norfolk,” he declared.  “I must admit, though, that some of them have had cause to grumble lately.  There’s a fellow round by Wells who farms nearly eight hundred acres—­”

He broke off in his speech.  There was a knock at the door, not an ordinary knock at all, but a measured, deliberate tapping, three times repeated.

“Come in,” Dominey called out.

Mrs. Unthank entered, severer, more unattractive than ever in the hard morning light.  She came to the end of the table, facing the place where Dominey was seated.

“Good morning, Mrs. Unthank,” he said.

She ignored the greeting.

“I am the bearer of a message,” she announced.

“Pray deliver it,” Dominey replied.

“Her ladyship would be glad for you to visit her in her apartment at once.”

Dominey leaned back in his chair.  His eyes were fixed upon the face of the woman whose antagonism to himself was so apparent.  She stood in the path of a long gleam of morning sunlight.  The wrinkles in her face, her hard mouth, her cold, steely eyes were all clearly revealed.

“I am not at all sure,” he said, with a purpose in the words, “that any further meeting between Lady Dominey and myself is at present desirable.”

If he had thought to disturb this messenger by his suggestion, he was disappointed.

“Her ladyship desires me to assure you,” she added, with a note of contempt in her tone, “that you need be under no apprehension.”

Dominey admitted defeat and poured himself out some more coffee.  Neither of the two noticed that his fingers were trembling.