"Yes, that is the question. That was why I kept silence. My pride could not endure that you should rank me with such men as Rannock. And there were others of the class pursuing you—ruined spendthrifts, to whom your fortune would mean a new lease of profligate pleasures. I saw Rannock favoured by you——"
"He was never favoured. I liked his society because he was unlike the rest of the world. I was sorry for him, for his disappointment, his lost opportunities. I thought him a broken-hearted man."
"Broken-hearted? Yes, that is the reprobate's last card; and unfortunately it often wins the game. Broken-hearted!—as if that battered heart could break! A man who has lived only to do mischief, a man whose friendship meant ruin for younger and better men."
"Women know so little of men's lives."
"Not such women as you."
"I confess that he interested me. He seemed a creature of whim and fancy, fluctuating between wild fun and deepest melancholy. I thought him generous and large-minded; since he showed no unkindly feeling when I refused to marry him, as other men had done whom I once thought my friends."
"Rannock looks longer ahead than other men. Be sure he did not love you for your refusal, and that he hung on in the hope you would change your mind. No man of that stamp was ever a woman's friend."
"Don't let us talk of him. I hate the sound of his name."
"Yet you pronounced it so bravely just now in Miss Rodney's drawing-room, and looked me in the face, as if you defied me to think ill of you."
"Well, it was something like a challenge perhaps. And did that convince you?"