“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.”
Lady Bell looked up with a start.
“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.”
Lady Bell looked at him inquiringly.
“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.”
Lady Bell’s heart beat fast.
“But—but—” she said, “you have plenty.”