"Why? A chauffeur's a chauffeur after all. They know what they have to
do. Besides, Carthew would do anything for me."

"Yes, that's you all over. You deliberately bewitch him, and then you
shamelessly exploit him. I shall compare notes with Carthew. I can give
him a useful tip or two about you."

"Oh! Here he is!" said Eve, who had been watching out of the window. "Au
revoir, my pet. Here's Machin with your breakfast and newspapers. I
daresay I shall be back before you're up. But don't count on me."

As he raised himself against pillows for the meal, after both she and
Machin had gone, Mr. Prohack remembered what his mind had said to him a
few hours earlier about fighting against further complications of his
existence, and he set his teeth and determined to fight hard.

Scarcely had he begun his breakfast when Eve returned, in a state of
excitement.

"There's a young woman downstairs waiting for you in the dining-room.
She wouldn't give her name to Machin, it seems, but she says she's your
new secretary. Apparently she recognised my car on the way from the
garage and stopped it and got into it; and then she found out she'd
forgotten something and the car had to go back with her to where she
lives, wherever that is, and that's why Carthew was late for _me_." Eve
delivered these sentences with a tremendous air of ordinariness, as
though they related quite usual events and disturbances, and as though
no wife could possibly see in them any matter for astonishment or
reproach. Such was one of her methods of making an effect.