“Those lines . . . I had them from him.”
“I know.”
“You’d heard him . . .?”
“I heard him then . . . At least I think . . .” The road was once more stretching firmly ahead of me to a belt of leafless trees. In the meadows on either side I saw deliberate cattle splashing up to their knees in muddy water. “It’s ten to two, Raney. Shall we see if we can find a place for lunch?”
“That’ll wait. You’re not fit to drive any more at present. . . . You’d . . . better tell me everything, old man.”
“But I’ve told you! I knew Eric was dead or dying because I had . . . I saw a letter from him quite recently. My nerves are rather jumpy.” . . .
“It’ll break poor Lady Lane’s heart,” he murmured. “And it’ll be a shock for Ivy.”
Slipping his arm through mine, O’Rane led me into a field by the roadside. Though he must have guessed that Eric’s letter had something to do with my frantic appeal the evening before, I could not speak at present for fear of breaking down. ‘Boyish to cry—can’t help it—bad fever—weak—ill.’ For many moments my head sang with Mr. Jingle’s clipped phrases. A shock for Ivy? Some one had told me her marriage was all the failure that Mr. Justice Maitland had predicted. It would have been better if she had married Eric: she might have kept him alive. It would have been better if Barbara had married him, better if he had never left America, best of all if he and she and I had never been born. . . .
“Babs can’t be ill,” O’Rane murmured as though he were thinking aloud; “or you wouldn’t be here. Sit down and smoke a cigarette.”
When he returned with the basket, I was able to tell him. I wondered at the time, I wonder still, whether I did right; but I know that I could not help it. He let me talk myself out, only asking dispassionately at the end: