Page 403 - lady-chatterlys-lover

Chapter 18

he had to make up her mind what to do. She would leave
SVenice on the Saturday that he was leaving Wragby: in
six days’ time. This would bring her to London on the Mon-
day following, and she would then see him. She wrote to
him to the London address, asking him to send her a letter
to Hartland’s hotel, and to call for her on the Monday eve-
ning at seven.
Inside herself she was curiously and complicatedly angry,
and all her responses were numb. She refused to confide
even in Hilda, and Hilda, offended by her steady silence,
had become rather intimate with a Dutch woman. Connie
hated these rather stifling intimacies between women, inti-
macy into which Hilda always entered ponderously.
Sir Malcolm decided to travel with Connie, and Duncan
could come on with Hilda. The old artist always did him-
self well: he took berths on the Orient Express, in spite of
Connie’s dislike of TRAINS DE LUXE, the atmosphere of
vulgar depravity there is aboard them nowadays. However,
it would make the journey to Paris shorter.
Sir Malcolm was always uneasy going back to his wife. It
was habit carried over from the first wife. But there would
be a house-party for the grouse, and he wanted to be well
ahead. Connie, sunburnt and handsome, sat in silence, for-
getting all about the landscape.

0 Lady Chatterly’s Lover