And that Ranny should have chosen this time of all times! When they'd paid off all the creditors and got clear, and stood respected and respectable again. As if his poor father's insolvency, which, after all, he couldn't help (since it was the Drug Stores that had ruined him), as if that wasn't enough disgrace for one family, he must needs go and rake up all that awful shame and trouble, after all these years, when everybody had forgotten that there _had_ been any trouble and any shame. That was what Mrs. Ransome found so hard to bear. And that she had been deceived; that he should have let her go on thinking that it wasn't possible, up to the last minute (it was Saturday and he was going to the lawyer on Monday), she who had the first right to be told. All these years he had deceived her. All these years he had meant to do it the very minute he had got his rise. For Ransome had attained the summit of his ambition. He was now a petty cashier with a pen all to himself at 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.