"While Benet, who is twice as big a man, and twice as handsome, is nobody," I said. "It is Otho who will get Endellion, Otho who will marry Mistress Nancy Molesworth and get Restormel,"—and I laughed in a sneering kind of way.
"No,—by the mass, no, if you will help me!"
"I help you!"—this I said in a tone of surprise. All the same, I expected something of this sort.
"I could see you pitied the maid," he went on. "I could see that a man of inches like you thought it was a shame for a maid such as she to be wedded to such a shambling creature as he."
"She should have a man like you," I suggested.
"Ah, you see it!" he cried. "I thought so last night. I said, Here is a man who knows a man!"—and he drew himself up with a sort of mountebank bravado.
"But I am kept out of it," he continued. "She is not allowed to think of me. She is not allowed even to see me. I must not speak to her. It's all Otho, Otho. He must have Endellion, he must have Restormel, and he must have the maid, too."
"And he seems to love her."
"Love her! With the cunning love of a priest. But it is not the love of a man such as I. If she could see me, talk with me, all would be different!"
"You think she would love you?"