He felt a savage rage against Roderick, who strolled in and out of the room half the morning, dressing and breakfasting by instalments, smoking, and writing letters, and crackling the daily papers, as it seemed to Harcourt, more persistently than newspapers were ever crackled before. _He_ was free to sally forth after his careful toilet, while his junior lay on that rickety sofa as furious in his wretched helplessness as some wounded hyena. Roderick had volunteered to call upon Francis at the Covent Garden hotel, to demand a reckoning for the scuffle at the supper-party; but Harcourt declined the friendly offer. “As soon as I can leave the house, I will go to him myself,” he said. “The fellow’s talk about going abroad is all bombast, I dare say. He will be sneaking back to his wife’s apron-string now that I am laid by the heels.” When Harcourt had read Maude’s letter, he tossed it over to his brother. “Do you know how to reckon that up?” he asked. “What does it mean?” Mr. Lowther the elder had by no means a high estimate of the female character. In his idea of the sex, the woman who was not a profound simpleton was only something very much worse than a simpleton. “The fellow has _not_ gone back to his wife; so that’s one point in your favour, at any rate,” said Roderick, after reading Maude’s epistle. “I dare say he’ll go altogether to the bad now, at a railroad pace, and finish himself off before the year is out. The lady’s anxious inquiries about her husband may be read in more ways than one. This letter _may_ be only intended to put _you_ _au courant_ as to the state of affairs. Unluckily, that ugly scar about your nose will prevent your calling on Mrs. Tredethlyn for some weeks. But I don’t mind being brotherly for once in a way; and I’ll look in at the Stuccoville mansion this afternoon, if you like. Virtue is sometimes rewarded, and there is just a chance that I may see the lovely Grunderson, and improve the occasion.” Harcourt, after a little deliberation, consented to this arrangement. His confidence in the honour of his brother was about as small as it could be; but as the interests of the two Antipholi were in this instance not antagonistic, he could scarcely have anything to fear from Roderick’s intervention.