Rupert looked down at the hand. It was so fair and soft and full of the expression of sympathy—such an adorably womanly little hand, that one’s first impulse was to lay one’s own upon it. He made a movement and then remembered, and looked up, and their eyes met and rested on each other gently.
When the subject of the claim was broached, Sheba thought it like a fairy tale. She listened almost with bated breath. As Rupert had not realised that he was pathetic in the relation of the first part of his story, so he did not know that he was picturesque in this. But his material had strong colour. The old man on the brink of splendid fortune, the strange, unforeseen national disaster sweeping all before it and leaving only poverty and ruin, the untouched wealth of the mines lying beneath the earth on which battles had been fought—all the possibilities the future might hold for one penniless boy—these things were full of suggestion and excitement.
“You would be rich,” said Sheba.
“So would Uncle Tom,” Rupert answered, smiling; “and you, too.”
Tom had been listening with a reflective look on his face. He tilted his chair back and ran his hand through his hair.
“At all events, we couldn’t lose money if we didn’t gain any,” he said. “That’s where we’re safe. When a man’s got to the place where he hasn’t anything to lose, he can afford to take chances. Perhaps it’s worth thinking over. Let’s go to bed, children. It’s midnight.”
When they said good-night to each other, the two young hands clung together kindly and Sheba looked up with sympathetic eyes.
“Would you like to be very rich?” she asked.
“To-night I am rich,” he answered. “That is because you and Uncle Tom have made me feel as if I belonged to someone. It is so long since I have seemed to belong to anyone.”
“But now you belong to us,” said Sheba.