“I think it will. You don’t mind having Sir Clifford on your hands alone for a time, do you?”
“Oh, no! I can manage him quite all right. I mean, I can do all he needs me to do. Don’t you think he’s better than he used to be?”
“Oh much! You do wonders with him.”
“Do I though! But men are all alike: just babies, and you have to flatter them and wheedle them and let them think they’re having their own way. Don’t you find it so, my Lady!”
“I’m afraid I haven’t much experience.”
Connie paused in her occupation.
“Even your husband, did you have to manage him, and wheedle him like a baby?” she asked, looking at the other woman.
Mrs. Bolton paused too.
“Well!” she said. “I had to do a good bit of coaxing, with him too. But he always knew what I was after, I must say that. But he generally gave in to me.”
“He was never the lord and master thing?”
“No! At least there’d be a look in his eyes sometimes, and then I knew I’d got to give in. But usually he gave in to me. No, he was never lord and master. But neither was I. I knew when I could go no further with him, and then I gave in: though it cost me a good bit, sometimes.”
“And what if you had held out against him?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I never did. Even when he was in the wrong, if he was fixed, I gave in. You see I never wanted to break what was between us.