Down posted Hilda from Scotland, where she had taken up her abode. She came in March, alone, driving herself in a nimble two–seater. Up the drive she came, tooting up the incline, then sweeping round the oval of grass, where the two great wild beech–trees stood, on the flat in front of the house.

Connie had run out to the steps. Hilda pulled up her car, got out, and kissed her sister.

‘But Connie!’ she cried. ‘Whatever is the matter?’

‘Nothing!’ said Connie, rather shamefacedly; but she knew how she had suffered in contrast to Hilda. Both sisters had the same rather golden, glowing skin, and soft brown hair, and naturally strong, warm physique. But now Connie was thin and earthy–looking, with a scraggy, yellowish neck, that stuck out of her jumper.

‘But you’re ill, child!’ said Hilda, in the soft, rather breathless voice that both sisters had alike. Hilda was nearly, but not quite, two years older than Connie.

‘No, not ill. Perhaps I’m bored,’ said Connie a little pathetically.

The light of battle glowed in Hilda’s face; she was a woman, soft and still as she seemed, of the old amazon sort, not made to fit with men.

‘This wretched place!’ she said softly, looking at poor, old, lumbering Wragby with real hate. She looked soft and warm herself, as a ripe pear, and she was an amazon of the real old breed.

She went quietly in to Clifford. He thought how handsome she looked, but also he shrank from her. His wife’s family did not have his sort of manners, or his sort of etiquette. He considered them rather outsiders, but once they got inside they made him jump through the hoop.

He sat square and well–groomed in his chair, his hair sleek and blond, and his face fresh, his blue eyes pale, and a little prominent, his expression inscrutable, but well–bred. Hilda thought it sulky and stupid, and he waited. He had an air of aplomb, but Hilda didn’t care what he had an air of; she was up in arms, and if he’d been Pope or Emperor it would have been just the same.

‘Connie’s looking awfully unwell,’ she said in her soft voice, fixing him with her beautiful, glowering grey eyes. She looked so maidenly, so did Connie; but he well knew the tone of Scottish obstinacy underneath.

‘She’s a little thinner,’ he said.

‘Haven’t you done anything about it?’

‘Do you think it necessary?’ he asked, with his suavest English stiffness, for the two things often go together.

Hilda only glowered at him without replying; repartee was not her forte, nor Connie’s; so she glowered, and he was much more uncomfortable than if she had said things.

‘I’ll take her to a doctor,’ said Hilda at length. ‘Can you suggest a good one round here?’

‘I’m afraid I can’t.’

‘Then I’ll take her to London, where we have a doctor we trust.’

Though boiling with rage, Clifford said nothing.