"Anxious!" she echoed, her heart beating. "As how?"
"Can you not guess?" he said, raising his eyebrows.
"You--you mean that they may fall in love with each other. Well, they are not badly matched," said Lady Bell, bravely, though her heart was aching.
"Not badly, in one sense," said Stephen, after a pause; "but as badly as two persons could be in all others. They are a match as regards their means. They are both penniless."
"Is--is Mr. Newcombe so badly off? I thought--that is, I fancied he had a wealthy uncle----" She paused.
"You mean Mr. Ralph Davenant," said Stephen, calmly, and with an air of sadness. "I am sorry to say that he left everything which he possessed to a less worthy person--to me."
"To me," he repeated, "and poor Jack was--well, disinherited, and left penniless. It is of him I think when I say that I am anxious about them; naturally, I think of him. Miss Rolfe is a friend of my mother's, and has been used to a straitened life; but poor Jack does not know what poverty means, and in his ignorance may drift into an entanglement which may embitter her life. No man in the world is less fitted for love in a cottage, and nothing to pay the rent, than Jack Newcombe. You, who have seen something of him, must have remarked his easy-going, careless nature, his utter ignorance of the value of money, his unsuitableness for a life of poverty and privation."
"But--but--" she said, "you have plenty."
"Of which Jack will not take one penny. You see he is as proud as he is poor."
"I like him for that," murmured Lady Bell.
"Yes, so do I; though it pains and grieves me. If Jack would permit me to help him, Lady Bell, he might marry Una Rolfe tomorrow; but as it is, I fear, I am anxious. Another man would be wiser, but Jack has no idea of prudence, and would plunge head first into all the misery of such a union without a thought of the morrow."
"And you--you think he loves her," murmured Lady Bell; and she waited for an answer as a man on his trial might wait for the verdict of the jury.
Stephen smiled. He could read Lady Bell's heart as if it were an open book.
"Loves her! No, certainly not--not yet. He is amused and entertained, but love has not come yet."
"And she?" asked Lady Bell, anxiously, her eyes fixed on Una's face.