Landtakers: The Story of an Epoch

Ludmilla had been looking for McGovern all the morning. In her thoughts, too, he appeared as a wily fish to be played with the utmost care. The keenest eye would not suspect her bait, she thought, unless. A glimpse of Emma riding off into the smoke answered her deepest fears, and the surly look McGovern gave her when she found him a few minutes later, goggling tearfully after Emma, did not reassure her. What was that woman doing here? What woman? There hadn't been no woman. A blatant lie and a lapse from the style of a squatting gentleman fallen on hard times which Ludmilla had to let pass. She was looking at his muscular neck with an eye that had learnt to tell the points of a good bull.

Clearly he had a depressing thought on his mind, and remained torpid even after she told him that she had sent for the parson.