Patience! Patience! The world is a vast and ghastly intricacy of mechanism, and one has to be very wary, not to get mangled by it.
Connie confided in her father.
“You see, Father, he was Clifford’s gamekeeper: but he was an officer in the army in India. Only he is like Colonel C. E. Florence, who preferred to become a private soldier again.”
Sir Malcolm, however, had no sympathy with the unsatisfactory mysticism of the famous C. E. Florence. He saw too much advertisement behind all the humility. It looked just like the sort of conceit the knight most loathed, the conceit of self-abasement.
“Where did your gamekeeper spring from?” asked Sir Malcolm irritably.
“He was a collier’s son in Tevershall. But he’s absolutely presentable.”
The knighted artist became more angry.
“Looks to me like a gold-digger,” he said. “And you’re a pretty easy goldmine, apparently.”
“No, Father, it’s not like that. You’d know if you saw him. He’s a man. Clifford always detested him for not being humble.”
“Apparently he had a good instinct, for once.”
What Sir Malcolm could not bear, was the scandal of his daughter’s having an intrigue with a gamekeeper. He did not mind the intrigue: he minded the scandal.
“I care nothing about the fellow. He’s evidently been able to get round you all right. But by God, think of all the talk. Think of your stepmother, how she’ll take it!”