‘But you wouldn’t do it,’ she said.

‘I would though! and with less qualms than I shoot a weasel. It anyhow has a prettiness and a loneliness. But they are legion. Oh, I’d shoot them.’

‘Then perhaps it is just as well you daren’t.’

‘Well.’

Connie had now plenty to think of. It was evident he wanted absolutely to be free of Bertha Coutts. And she felt he was right. The last attack had been too grim.—This meant her living alone, till spring. Perhaps she could get divorced from Clifford. But how? If Mellors were named, then there was an end to his divorce. How loathsome! Couldn’t one go right away, to the far ends of the earth, and be free from it all?

One could not. The far ends of the world are not five minutes from Charing Cross, nowadays. While the wireless is active, there are no far ends of the earth. Kings of Dahomey and Lamas of Tibet listen in to London and New York.

Patience! Patience! The world is a vast and ghastly intricacy of mechanism, and one has to be very wary, not to get mangled by it.

Connie confided in her father.

‘You see, Father, he was Clifford’s game–keeper: but he was an officer in the army in India. Only he is like Colonel C. E. Florence, who preferred to become a private soldier again.’

Sir Malcolm, however, had no sympathy with the unsatisfactory mysticism of the famous C. E. Florence. He saw too much advertisement behind all the humility. It looked just like the sort of conceit the knight most loathed, the conceit of self–abasement.

‘Where did your game–keeper spring from?’ asked Sir Malcolm irritably.

‘He was a collier’s son in Tevershall. But he’s absolutely presentable.’

The knighted artist became more angry.

‘Looks to me like a gold–digger,’ he said. ‘And you’re a pretty easy gold–mine, apparently.’

‘No, Father, it’s not like that. You’d know if you saw him. He’s a man. Clifford always detested him for not being humble.’

‘Apparently he had a good instinct, for once.’

What Sir Malcolm could not bear was the scandal of his daughter’s having an intrigue with a game–keeper. He did not mind the intrigue: he minded the scandal.

‘I care nothing about the fellow. He’s evidently been able to get round you all right. But, by God, think of all the talk. Think of your step–mother how she’ll take it!’

‘I know,’ said Connie. ‘Talk is beastly: especially if you live in society. And he wants so much to get his own divorce. I thought we might perhaps say it was another man’s child, and not mention Mellors’ name at all.’

‘Another man’s! What other man’s?’

‘Perhaps Duncan Forbes. He has been our friend all his life.’

‘And he’s a fairly well–known artist. And he’s fond of me.’