"I shan't," cried Connie, flushed red. "He's quite the exception. I really love him. He's lovely as a lover."
Hilda still pondered.
"You'll get over him quite soon," she said, "and live to be ashamed of yourself because of him."
"I shan't! I hope I'm going to have a child of his."
"Connie!" said Hilda, hard as a hammer stroke, and pale with anger.
"I shall if I possibly can. I should be fearfully proud if I had a child by him."
It was no use talking to her. Hilda pondered.
"And doesn't Clifford suspect?" she said.
"Oh, no! Why should he?"
"I've no doubt you've given him plenty of occasion for suspicion," said Hilda.
"Not at all."
"And tonight's business seems quite gratuitous folly. Where does the man live?"
"In the cottage at the other end of the wood."
"Is he a bachelor?"
"No! His wife left him."
"How old?"
"I don't know. Older than me."
Hilda became more angry at every reply, angry as her mother used to be, in a kind of paroxysm. But still she hid it.
"I would give up tonight's escapade if I were you," she advised calmly.
"I can't! I must stay with him tonight, or I can't go to Venice at all. I just can't."
Hilda heard her father over again, and she gave way, out of mere diplomacy. And she consented to drive to Mansfield, both of them, to dinner, to bring Connie back to the lane-end after dark, and to fetch her from the lane-end the next morning, herself sleeping in Mansfield, only half an hour away, good going. But she was furious. She stored it up against her sister, this baulk in her plans.
Connie flung an emerald-green shawl over her window-sill.
On the strength of her anger, Hilda warmed towards Clifford. After all, he had a mind. And if he had no sex, functionally, all the better: so much the less to quarrel about! Hilda wanted no more
