“Now, at once, if your ladyship wishes. I will stay now, and send for my luggage, if you please.”
“Very well,” said Lady Bell. “Come to my room in half an hour, and we will arrange matters. You have said nothing about salary.”
“That I leave in your ladyship’s hands.”
“Like the cabmen,” said Lady Bell, laughing. “Well, come to my room in half an hour.”
Laura Treherne bowed and left the room, and Mrs. Fellowes lifted up her voice in remonstrance.
“My dear Bell, that letter may be a forgery.”
“It might be, but it isn’t. I can read faces, and I like that young lady’s. Yes, she’s a lady, poor girl. Well, she might have hit upon a worse mistress; I shan’t bang her about the head with a hair brush when I’m in a temper, as Lady Courtney does her maid. There, spare your remonstrances, my dear. The girl’s engaged, and I mean to keep her. And now there are three or four people coming to dinner, Mr. and Mrs. Davenant, Jack—I mean Mr. Newcombe—and that strange girl, Una. What a lovely creature she is! Do you know I rather think she will become Mrs. Stephen Davenant.”
“She is a very nice girl,” said Mrs. Fellowes. “She ought to make a good match.”
“Ay de me,” said Lady Bell, with a sigh. “I’m sick of that word. Men and women don’t ‘marry’ now, they make ‘good matches.’ My dear, I hate your worldly way of looking at matrimony. If I were a poor girl, I’d marry the man of my heart, if he hadn’t a penny. Ah, and if he were the baddest of bad lots.”
“Like Jack Newcombe, for instance,” said Mrs. Fellowes, archly.