Connie had a sitting-room on the third floor, the top floor of the central portion of the house. Clifford’s rooms were on the ground floor, of course. Michaelis was flattered by being asked up to Lady Chatterley’s own parlour. He followed blindly after the servant⁠ ⁠… he never noticed things, or had contact with his surroundings. In her room he did glance vaguely round at the fine German reproductions of Renoir and Cézanne.

“It’s very pleasant up here,” he said, with his queer smile, as if it hurt him to smile, showing his teeth. “You are wise to get to the top.”

“Yes, I think so,” she said.

Her room was the only gay, modern one in the house, the only spot in Wragby where her personality was at all revealed. Clifford had never seen it, and she asked very few people up.