‘Yes, I’m glad I went, and such a quaint dear cheeky baby, Clifford,’ said Connie. ‘It’s got hair just like spider–webs, and bright orange, and the oddest, cheekiest, pale–blue china eyes. Of course it’s a girl, or it wouldn’t be so bold, bolder than any little Sir Francis Drake.’

‘You’re right, my Lady—a regular little Flint. They were always a forward sandy–headed family,’ said Mrs Bolton.

‘Wouldn’t you like to see it, Clifford? I’ve asked them to tea for you to see it.’

‘Who?’ he asked, looking at Connie in great uneasiness. ‘Mrs Flint and the baby, next Monday.’

‘You can have them to tea up in your room,’ he said.

‘Why, don’t you want to see the baby?’ she cried.

‘Oh, I’ll see it, but I don’t want to sit through a tea–time with them.’

‘Oh,’ cried Connie, looking at him with wide veiled eyes.

She did not really see him, he was somebody else.

‘You can have a nice cosy tea up in your room, my Lady, and Mrs Flint will be more comfortable than if Sir Clifford was there,’ said Mrs Bolton.

She was sure Connie had a lover, and something in her soul exulted. But who was he? Who was he? Perhaps Mrs Flint would provide a clue.

Connie would not take her bath this evening. The sense of his flesh touching her, his very stickiness upon her, was dear to her, and in a sense holy.

Clifford was very uneasy. He would not let her go after dinner, and she had wanted so much to be alone. She looked at him, but was curiously submissive.

‘Shall we play a game, or shall I read to you, or what shall it be?’ he asked uneasily.

‘You read to me,’ said Connie.

‘What shall I read—verse or prose? Or drama?’

‘Read Racine,’ she said.

It had been one of his stunts in the past, to read Racine in the real French grand manner, but he was rusty now, and a little self–conscious; he really preferred the loudspeaker. But Connie was sewing, sewing a little frock silk of primrose silk, cut out of one of her dresses, for Mrs Flint’s baby. Between coming home and dinner she had cut it out, and she sat in the soft quiescent rapture of herself sewing, while the noise of the reading went on.

Inside herself she could feel the humming of passion, like the after–humming of deep bells.

Clifford said something to her about the Racine. She caught the sense after the words had gone.

‘Yes! Yes!’ she said, looking up at him. ‘It is splendid.’

Again he was frightened at the deep blue blaze of her eyes, and of her soft stillness, sitting there. She had never been so utterly soft and still. She fascinated him helplessly, as if some perfume about her intoxicated him. So he went on helplessly with his reading, and the throaty sound of the French was like the wind in the chimneys to her. Of the Racine she heard not one syllable.