"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.
"I suppose I may as well stay the night," said Hilda, pulling off her gloves, "and I'll drive her to town tomorrow."
Clifford was yellow at the gills with anger, and at evening the whites of his eyes were a little yellow too. He ran to liver. But Hilda was consistently modest and maidenly.
"You must have a nurse or somebody, to look after you personally. You should really have a manservant," said Hilda as they sat, with apparent calmness, at coffee after dinner. She spoke in her soft, seemingly gentle way, but Clifford felt she was hitting him on the head with a bludgeon.
"You think so?" he said coldly.
"I'm sure! It's necessary. Either that, or father and I must take Connie away for some months. This can't go on."
"What can't go on?"
"Haven't you looked at the child?" asked Hilda, gazing at him full stare. He looked rather like a huge, boiled crayfish, at the moment; or so she thought.
"Connie and I will discuss it," he said.
"I've already discussed it with her," said Hilda.
Clifford had been long enough in the hands of nurses; he hated them, because they left him no real privacy. And a manservant!. . . he couldn't stand a man hanging round him. Almost better any woman. But why not Connie?
The two sisters drove off in the morning, Connie looking rather like an Easter lamb, rather small beside Hilda, who held the wheel. Sir Malcolm was away, but the Kensington house was open.
The doctor examined Connie carefully, and asked her all about her life. "I see your photograph, and Sir Clifford's, in the illustrated papers sometimes. Almost notorieties, aren't you? That's how the quiet little girls grow up, though you're only a quiet little girl even now, in spite of the illustrated papers. No, no! There's nothing organically wrong, but it won't do! it won't do! Tell Sir Clifford he's got to bring you to town, or take you abroad, and amuse you. You've got to be amused, got to! Your vitality is much too low; no
