I've seen the tombstone of
Lucilla Smith in Goring churchyard, but I don't know _for a fact_
that Lord Goring was the father of Lucilla's son (who was killed in
the war). I guess he was, from this and that, from what Mrs. Legg
told me, and what I overheard at the Sterns'. If he wasn't, then he
has only himself to thank for the wrong assumption: I mean, from his
goings-on.
Then again, the Clementses, who live at the Grange. I feel
instinctively they are _nice_ people, but I haven't the least idea
who _she_ was and how _he_ made his money, though from his acreage
and his motors I am entitled to assume he has a large income. She
seems to know a lot about Spain; but I don't feel encouraged to ask
her: "Was your father in the wine trade? Is _that_ why you know
Xeres so well?" Clements himself has in his study an enlarged
photograph of a handsome woman with a kind of mourning wreath round
the frame--beautifully carved. Is it the portrait of a former wife?
Or of a sister who committed suicide? Or was it merely bought in
Venice for the sake of the carving? Perhaps I shall know some
day--if it matters. In a moment of expansion during the Railway
Strike, Mrs. Clements will say: "_That_ was poor Walter's first. She
died of acute dyspepsia, poor thing, on their marriage tour, and was
buried at Venice. Don't ever allude to it because he feels it so
dreadfully.
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