"Your ward is our right hand. We women want a man to work for us always. It is his business, and his pleasure, too, to help us to amuse ourselves. He finds diversions; he invents all kinds of things for us. Just now he is arranging tableaux and plays for Christmas."
"Is it—is it—oh, Miss Kennedy—is it for the girls only?"
"That is dangerous ground," she replied, but not severely. "Do you think we had better discuss the subject from that point of view?"
"Poor boy!" said Lord Jocelyn. "It is the point of view from which I must regard it."
She blushed again—and her beautiful eyes grew limpid.
"Do you think," she said, speaking low, "do you think I do not feel for him? Yet there is a cause—a sentiment, perhaps. The time is not quite come. Lord Jocelyn, be patient with me!"
"You will take pity on him?"
"Oh!" she took the hand he offered her. "If I can make him happy——"
"If not," replied Lord Jocelyn, kissing her hand, "he would be the most ungrateful dog in all the world. If not, he deserves to get nothing but a shilling an hour for the miserable balance of his days. A shilling? No; let him go back to his tenpence. My dear young lady, you have made me at all events, the happiest of men! No, do not fear: neither by word nor look shall Harry—shall any one—know what you have been so very, very good, so generous, and so thoughtful as to tell me."
"He loves me for myself," she murmured. "He does not know that I am rich. Think of that, and think of the terrible suspicions which grow up in every rich woman's heart when a man makes love to her. Now I can never, never doubt his honesty. For my sake he has given up so much; for my sake—mine! oh! Why are men so good to women?"