“Miss Una and Mr. Newcombe seem very good friends,” she said, with a forced smile.
“Do they not?” said Stephen, in his softest voice. “Too good.”
Lady Bell looked up at him quickly.
“What do you mean?”
Stephen looked down at her gravely.
“Can you keep a secret, Lady Bell?” he said, hesitatingly.
“Sometimes,” she said. “What is it?”
Stephen glanced across at Jack and Una.
“I’m rather anxious about our young friends,” he said, his voice dropped still lower, his head bent forward with such an insidious smile that Lady Bell could not, for the life of her, help thinking of a serpent.
“Anxious!” she echoed, her heart beating. “As how?”