And Sir Malcolm sat back and smiled again. Connie did not answer.

‘I hope you had a real man at last,’ he said to her after a while, sensually alert.

‘I did. That’s the trouble. There aren’t many of them about,’ she said.

‘No, by God!’ he mused. ‘There aren’t! Well, my dear, to look at you, he was a lucky man. Surely he wouldn’t make trouble for you?’

‘Oh no! He leaves me my own mistress entirely.’

‘Quite! Quite! A genuine man would.’

Sir Malcolm was pleased. Connie was his favourite daughter, he had always liked the female in her. Not so much of her mother in her as in Hilda. And he had always disliked Clifford. So he was pleased, and very tender with his daughter, as if the unborn child were his child.

He drove with her to Hartland’s hotel, and saw her installed: then went round to his club. She had refused his company for the evening.

She found a letter from Mellors.

I won’t come round to your hotel, but I’ll wait for you outside the Golden Cock in Adam Street at seven.

There he stood, tall and slender, and so different, in a formal suit of thin dark cloth. He had a natural distinction, but he had not the cut–to–pattern look of her class. Yet, she saw at once, he could go anywhere. He had a native breeding which was really much nicer than the cut–to–pattern class thing.

‘Ah, there you are! How well you look!’

‘Yes! But not you.’

She looked in his face anxiously. It was thin, and the cheekbones showed. But his eyes smiled at her, and she felt at home with him. There it was: suddenly, the tension of keeping up her appearances fell from her. Something flowed out of him physically, that made her feel inwardly at ease and happy, at home. With a woman’s now alert instinct for happiness, she registered it at once. ‘I’m happy when he’s there!’ Not all the sunshine of Venice had given her this inward expansion and warmth.

‘Was it horrid for you?’ she asked as she sat opposite him at table. He was too thin; she saw it now. His hand lay as she knew it, with the curious loose forgottenness of a sleeping animal. She wanted so much to take it and kiss it. But she did not quite dare.

‘People are always horrid,’ he said.

‘And did you mind very much?’

‘I minded, as I always shall mind. And I knew I was a fool to mind.’

‘Did you feel like a dog with a tin can tied to its tail? Clifford said you felt like that.’

He looked at her. It was cruel of her at that moment: for his pride had suffered bitterly.

‘I suppose I did,’ he said.

She never knew the fierce bitterness with which he resented insult.

There was a long pause.

‘And did you miss me?’ she asked.

‘I was glad you were out of it.’

Again there was a pause.

‘But did people BELIEVE about you and me?’ she asked.