t the top of the counting-house, and
an income of two hundred a year. Short of making him assistant secretary
(which was ridiculous) Woolridge's could do no more for him.

And Winny Dymond (Mrs. Ransome reflected bitterly), though he hadn't
been free to speak to her, though he was practically (it didn't occur to
Mrs. Ransome that what she meant was theoretically) a married man, Winny
had known it all the time.

It was extraordinary, but Mrs. Ransome, who was really fond of Winny,
felt toward her more acute and concentrated bitterness than she had felt
toward Violet, whom she hated. She was able to think of Ranny's first
wife as poor Violet, though Violet had made him miserable and destroyed
his home and had left him and his children. And the thought of his
marrying Winny Dymond was intolerable to Mrs. Ransome, though she had
recognized her as the one woman Ranny ought to have married, the one
woman worthy of him, and she would have continued to welcome her in that
capacity as long as Ranny had refrained from marrying her.

For Ranny's mother knew that in Violet her motherhood had had no rival.
Violet's passion for Ranny, Ranny's passion for Violet, had not robbed
her of her son. Violet, not having in her one atom of natural feeling,
and caring only for her husband's manhood and his physical perfection,
had left to Mrs. Ransome all that was most dear to her in Ranny. Married
to Violet, he was still dependent on his mother. He clung to her, he
deferred to her judgment, he came to her for comfort. If he had been
ill it was she and not Violet who would have nursed him. Whereas Winny
would take all that away from her. She would take--she could not help
taking--Ranny utterly away; not from malice, not from selfishness, not
because she wanted to take him, but because she could not help it. She
was so made as to be all in all to him, so made as to draw him to her
all in all. There would be absolutely nothing of Ranny left over for his
mother, except the affection he had always felt for her, which, for a
woman of Mrs. Ransome's temperament, was the least thing that she
claimed. Her instinct had divined Winny infallibly, not only as a wife
to Ranny, but as a mother. A mother Winny was and would be to him far
more than if she had used her womanhood to bear him children.

So that, without the smallest preparation, she saw herself required at
six months' notice to give up her son. And while she blamed him for not
having told her,