Page 206 - lady-chatterlys-lover

pecially against the masters, that they had killed him. They
had not really killed him. Yet, to her, emotionally, they had.
And somewhere deep in herself because of it, she was a ni-
hilist, and really anarchic.
In her half-sleep, thoughts of her Ted and thoughts of
Lady Chatterley’s unknown lover commingled, and then
she felt she shared with the other woman a great grudge
against Sir Clifford and all he stood for. At the same time
she was playing piquet with him, and they were gambling
sixpences. And it was a source of satisfaction to be playing
piquet with a baronet, and even losing sixpences to him.
When they played cards, they always gambled. It made
him forget himself. And he usually won. Tonight too he
was winning. So he would not go to sleep till the first dawn
appeared. Luckily it began to appear at half past four or
thereabouts.
Connie was in bed, and fast asleep all this time. But the
keeper, too, could not rest. He had closed the coops and
made his round of the wood, then gone home and eaten
supper. But he did not go to bed. Instead he sat by the fire
and thought.
He thought of his boyhood in Tevershall, and of his five
or six years of married life. He thought of his wife, and al-
ways bitterly. She had seemed so brutal. But he had not seen
her now since 1915, in the spring when he joined up. Yet
there she was, not three miles away, and more brutal than
ever. He hoped never to see her again while he lived.
He thought of his life abroad, as a soldier. India, Egypt,
then India again: the blind, thoughtless life with the horses:

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