After a time of worry and harassment, she decided to go to Wragby.
Hilda would go with her. She wrote this to Clifford. He replied:
I shall not welcome your sister, but I shall not deity her the door. I
have no doubt she has connived at your desertion of your duties and
responsibilities, so do not expect me to show pleasure in seeing her.
They went to Wragby. Clifford was away when they arrived. Mrs Bolton
received them.
`Oh, your Ladyship, it isn't the happy home-coming we hoped for, is
it!' she said.
`Isn't it?' said Connie.
So this woman knew! How much did the rest of the servants know or
suspect?
She entered the house, which now she hated with every fibre in her
body. The great, rambling mass of a place seemed evil to her, just a menace
over her. She was no longer its mistress, she was its victim.
`I can't stay long here,' she whispered to Hilda, terrified.
And she suffered going into her own bedroom, re-entering into
possession as if nothing had happened. She hated every minute inside the
Wragby walls.
They did not meet Clifford till they went down to dinner. He was
dressed, and with a black tie: rather reserved, and very much the superior
gentleman. He behaved perfectly politely during the meal and kept a polite
sort of conversation going: but it seemed all touched with insanity.
`How much do the servants know?' asked Connie, when the woman was out
of the room.
`Of your intentions? Nothing whatsoever.'
`Mrs Bolton knows.'
He changed colour.
`Mrs Bolton is not exactly one of the servants,' he said.
`Oh, I don't mind.'
There was tension till after coffee, when Hilda said she would go up to
her room.
Clifford and Connie sat in silence when she had gone. Neither would
begin to speak. Connie was so glad that he wasn't taking the pathetic line,
she kept him up to as much haughtiness as possible. She just sat silent and
looked down at her hands.
`I suppose you don't at all mind having gone back on your word?' he
said at last.
`I can't help it,' she murmured.
`But if you can't, who can?'
`I suppose nobody.'
He looked at her with curious cold rage. He was used to her. She was as
it were embedded in his will. How dared she now go back on him, and destroy
the fabric of his daily existence? How dared she try to cause this
derangement of his personality?
`And for what do you want to go back on everything?' he insisted.
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