But that didn't comfort him as I had expected. "Even if she guesses she couldn't be expected to release—m—my friend."
"Why?"
"Because," said Ranny with his childlike air, "because she'll probably never have as good an offer again."
I was conscious of an inner fury when he said that. I turned on him. And all of a sudden, quite curiously, my feeling changed. His face showed not only utter innocence of any arrogance, the expression on it was of great misery. And this was so at odds with the roundness and the hint of dimples, the roughened hair that the damp air had begun to curl, that as I looked at him, I felt the queer, stirring-at-the-heart sort of softness perhaps only women know, when they catch a glimpse in some man's face of the child that died when he grew up. I could see just what Ranny had been like when he was in short dresses. Full of laughter; as he was still when we first knew him. And in face of those earlier bumps and bruises, just this bewilderment overmastering the pain of the baby who is outraged at the disproportion between desert and reward—the baby who thinks, if he doesn't say: "I never did a single thing, and here all this has tumbled down on my head."
In that instant I saw how lovable Ranny Dallas was, and instead of reproaching him, I found myself saying: "If that's true—what you say—it is very horrible for the girl, but I see it is probably nearly as horrible for the man."
And Ranny sat down on the wet heather under a gorse bush and buried his face in his hands.
"Get up," I said; "here's my handkerchief. Get up quickly. Lady Helmstone is coming."
But who was the man with her?