now Connie was thin and earthy-looking, with a scraggy, yellowish neck, that
stuck out of her jumper.
`But you're ill, child!' said Hilda, in the soft, rather breathless
voice that both sisters had alike. Hilda was nearly, but not quite, two
years older than Connie.
`No, not ill. Perhaps I'm bored,' said Connie a little pathetically.
The light of battle glowed in Hilda's face; she was a woman, soft and
still as she seemed, of the old amazon sort, not made to fit with men.
`This wretched place!' she said softly, looking at poor, old, lumbering
Wragby with real hate. She looked soft and warm herself, as a ripe pear, and
she was an amazon of the real old breed.
She went quietly in to Clifford. He thought how handsome she looked,
but also he shrank from her. His wife's family did not have his sort of
manners, or his sort of etiquette. He considered them rather outsiders, but
once they got inside they made him jump through the hoop.
He sat square and well-groomed in his chair, his hair sleek and blond,
and his face fresh, his blue eyes pale, and a little prominent, his
expression inscrutable, but well-bred. Hilda thought it sulky and stupid,
and he waited. He had an air of aplomb, but Hilda didn't care what he had an
air of; she was up in arms, and if he'd been Pope or Emperor it would have
been just the same.
`Connie's looking awfully unwell,' she said in her soft voice, fixing
him with her beautiful, glowering grey eyes. She looked so maidenly, so did
Connie; but he well knew the tone of Scottish obstinacy underneath.
`She's a little thinner,' he said.
`Haven't you done anything about it?'
`Do you think it necessary?' he asked, with his suavest English
stiffness, for the two things often go together.
Hilda only glowered at him without replying; repartee was not her
forte, nor Connie's; so she glowered, and he was much more uncomfortable
than if she had said things.
`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
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