"Are you thinking of writing to her?" I said. She explained that for her to address Mrs. Harborough was, under the circumstances, hardly possible. But there was no reason in the world why I should not.
I felt there were reasons, but I could not think what they were. My mother, meanwhile, grew almost cheerful, outlining the sort of thing I might say. No requests in this first communication. A letter, merely—if it found her so inclined—merely to open a long-closed door.
I did not like my task. I decided I would put it off till morning, though I knew that at any time I should find it easier to write: "Please lend me £1,000 for a course of study," than write such a letter as my mother had dictated.
Betty came back from her dinner-party in great excitement. Ranny Dallas had motored over from Dartmoor that very day—with a man friend. They had been at the Helmstones' to tea.
I wondered, dully, that Lady Helmstone had said nothing whatever about Ranny during her visit. She must have just parted from him. Another curious thing was that Ranny had not stayed for the dinner-party. He and his friend were at the inn.
"What in the world do you think that means?" I asked Bettina, glad enough to escape from my own thoughts.
She was smiling. "I think it is very natural."
And why was it natural for a luxurious young man to put up with tough mutton and watery potatoes at a village inn, when he and any friend of his were certain of a welcome, and the best possible dinner, in a house like the Helmstones'?
Betty merely continued to smile in that beatific, but somewhat foolish fashion. I said, rather more to make her speak than for any soberer reason, "Perhaps he isn't so sure of his welcome"; and then in a flash I saw quite clearly something I had been blind to till that instant. For all the liking the Helmstones felt for Betty they may not have liked being undeceived about Ranny's supposed devotion to Hermione. That this idea had never occurred to me before showed me stupid, I saw, as well as self-absorbed. But the idea would not have occurred to me at all, I think, but for some of the things Lady Helmstone had said to my mother that afternoon.