"Yes," said Coombe, "if I ever saw a pretty girl, it was that one! Betty her name is, because I asked her, and she is Lady Kathleen’s maid and all I’ve got to say is that her ladyship must be the purest and sweetest soul living or she wouldn’t have a lovely young thing like that in the same house as her own young husband!"
Scarsdale started. "Why—what do you mean, Mr. Coombe? Is Homewood the type of man who would——"
"Heaven forbid it, there isn’t a cleaner, better lad living than Allan Homewood. But there’s a certain prayer as runs—’Lead us not into temptation,’ Sir Harold and knowing what I know——" Mr. Coombe paused.
"I know that Lady Kathleen Homewood is a sweet and lovely young lady, though how she came to have such a father—at any rate I know there isn’t a finer lady in this land than her, and I know that Allan Homewood is a lad who if I had had a daughter of my own I’d have liked to have seen her married to, but for all that it was old Homewood who made the marriage, his money that did it, and though they like one another and respect one another, as all the world can see, why—why—do you see, Sir Harold, it isn’t the same as if it had been a love match and they had married for love, do you take me?"
"I understand you quite well and because it was not a love match——"
"Well, Sir Harold, because Allan ain’t in love with Lady Kathleen, it’s just possible, isn’t it, he might, I say—might—fall in love with someone else, as is natural! Young blood, Sir Harold, young blood—you know. It’s natural for a man to seek his own mate and that’s why I don’t hold with loveless marriages. Depend on it the man, and very often the woman too, will find he needs the love his marriage didn’t bring him and he’ll look for it, or if he don’t look for it, Sir Harold, why then it may come to him all the same."
"And you think that Mr. Allan Homewood might possibly fall in love with his wife’s little maid, eh?"
"God forbid I should think anything of the kind," said Mr. Coombe. "I never said it and I don’t want to think it, but I do say if I was my Lady Kathleen’s father, which I am not, I’d say to her, ’My dear, that little maid of yours is too pretty by half, and it would be best that you got rid of her!’"