for Emmy's sake, and not to pass it on. Wild
horses, Mrs. Randall said, wouldn't drag it out of her.

Not that they believed or could believe such a thing of Mr. Ransome, who
had been known in Wandsworth for five-and-twenty years before that young
Mercier was so much as born. And by holding their tongues about it and
not passing it on they had succeeded in dismissing from their minds, for
long intervals at a time, the story they had heard about Mr. Ransome.
"For, mind you," said Mr. Randall, "if it got about it would ruin him.
Ruin him it would. As much as if it was true."

Long afterward when she thought of that Sunday, and how beautifully
they'd spoken of Mr. Ransome; that Sunday when they had had tea upstairs
in the best parlor on the front; that Sunday that had been half pleasure
and half pain; that strange and ominous Sunday when poor Ranny had
broken out and been so wild; long afterward, when she thought of it,
Mrs. Ransome found that tears were in her eyes.

She had no idea then that they had heard anything. Family affection was
what you looked for from the Randalls, and on Sundays they showed it by
a frequent dropping in to tea.

John Randall, the draper, was a fine man. A tall, erect, full-fronted
man, a superb figure in a frock coat. A man with a florid, handsome
face, clean-shaved for the greater salience of his big mustache (dark,
grizzled like his hair). A man with handsome eyes--prominent, slightly
bloodshot, generous eyes. He might have passed for a soldier but for
something that detracted, something that Ranny noticed. But even Ranny
hesitated to call it flabbiness in so fine a man.

Mr. Randall had married a woman who had been even finer than himself.
And she was still fine, with her black hair dressed in a prominent
pompadour, and her figure curbed by the tightness of her Sunday gown.
Under her polished hair Mrs. Randall's face shone with a blond pallor.
It had grown up gradually round her features, and they, becoming more
and more insignificant, were now merged in its general expression of
good will. Ranny noted with wonder this increasing simplification of
his Aunt Randall's face.

She entered as if under stress, towing her large husband through the
doorway, and in and out among the furniture.

The room that received them was full of furniture, walnut wood,
mid-Victorian in design, upholstered in rep, which had faded from
crimson to an agreeable old rose. Rep curtains over Nottingham lace hung