"Mrs Ranyard deserves to have her tongue removed. She'd tell any lie about another woman."
"Quito so. But is it a lie? It fits in too neatly with—the other things——"
Lance gave him a sidelong look. Their faces were just visible in the moonlight.
"Jealous—are you?"—His tone was almost tender.—"You damned lucky devil—you've no cause to be."
That natural inference startlingly revealed to Roy that jealousy had little or nothing to do with his trouble; and so great was the relief of open speech between them, that instinctively he told truth.
"N-no. I'm bothered about you."
"Good God!" Desmond's abrupt laugh had no mirth in it. "Me?"
"Yes—naturally. If it amounted to ... an engagement, and I charged in and upset everything ... I can't forgive myself ... or her——"
At that Desmond sat forward, obstructive no longer. "If you're going so badly off the rails, you must have it straight. And ... confound you!... it hurts——"
"I can see that. And it's more or less my doing——"