“How beautiful she looks!” he thought. “How beautiful! Worth risking all for—all!”
“Won’t you go up and dress, Stephen?” said Mrs. Davenant. “There is a large fire in your room, and in Jack’s too; I have just been into both of them.”
“Yes, yes,” he said, not nervously, but with almost an absent air, and he left the room.
“Stephen looks tired,” said Mrs. Davenant. “I’m afraid he has had some business that has worried him. I can always tell by his face.”
“I am very sorry,” said Una, gently. “Yes, he did look tired and worried,” she added, but with her eyes on the clock. The hands went round to the hour—an hour beyond Jack’s time—and the butler announced dinner.
“Oh, we will wait a little while for Mr. Newcombe!” said Mrs. Davenant, but Una, with a little flush, murmured:
“No, do not, please; Mr. Davenant must want his dinner. Please do not wait;” and Mrs. Davenant, never able to stand out against anyone’s will, rose and put her arm in Una’s and they went into the dining-room. Stephen followed and sat down without making any remark on Jack’s absence; even when Mrs. Davenant said to the butler—“Let them be sure and keep the soup hot for Mr. Newcombe,” Stephen made no observation.
Dish after dish disappeared, and Una made a faint pretence at eating as usual, and joined in the conversation between Stephen and Mrs. Davenant, but her eyes were continually straying toward the clock, her ears straining for the sound of wheels or a galloping horse.
The dinner was a thing of the past, and the soup had been kept hot in vain; no Jack arrived. Gradually silence had fallen on the three, and when Mrs. Davenant rose it was with a sigh of loving sympathy with the troubled heart that ached so near her own.
“I cannot think what has kept him,” she said, when they were alone together in the drawing-room. “If it were anyone but Jack I should feel nervous—but even I cannot feel nervous about him. It is a plain, easy road from Earl’s Court, and he rides like a—a centaur.”