There was a long pause.

“And what are your plans?”

“I don’t know. That’s the point.”

“No patching it up with Clifford?”

“I suppose Clifford would take it,” said Connie. “He told me, after last time you talked to him, he wouldn’t mind if I had a child: so long as I went about it discreetly.”

“Only sensible thing he could say, under the circumstances. Then I suppose it’ll be all right.”

“In what way?” said Connie, looking into her father’s eyes. They were big blue eyes rather like her own, but with a certain uneasiness in them, a look sometimes of an uneasy little boy, sometimes a look of sullen selfishness, usually good-humoured and wary.

“You can present Clifford with an heir to all the Chatterleys, and put another baronet in Wragby.”