Yes, he _must_ be told.
Having come to a settled resolution on this point, Rotha rose up from
the bed, and, brushing her tangled hair from her forehead, walked back
into the kitchen. Standing where she had stood while the constables
were there, she enacted every incident and heard every syllable
afresh.
There could be no longer any doubt that Ralph should know what had
already happened and what further was threatened. Yet who was to tell
him, and how was he to be told? It was useless to approach Willy in
his present determination rather to suffer eviction than to do Ralph
the injury of leading, or seeming to lead, to his apprehension.
"That was a noble purpose, but it was wrong," thought Rotha, and it
never occurred to her to make terms with a mistake. "It was a noble
purpose," she thought again; and when the memory of her own personal
grief crept up once more, she suppressed it with the reflection,
"Willy was sore tried, poor lad."
Who was to tell Ralph, and how was he to be told? Who knew where he
had gone, or, knowing this, could go in search of him? Would that she
herself had been born a man; then she would have travelled the kingdom
over, but she would have found him.
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