“Who is Abel?” inquired Arthur.
“Why, my nephew, Abel Don Juan Pelham Newt, of Grand Street, and Boniface Newt, Son, & Company, Dry Goods on Commission, Esquire,” replied Lawrence Newt, with perfect gravity.
Arthur looked at him bewildered.
“Don’t you know my nephew, Abel Newt?”
“No, not personally. I’ve heard of him, of course.”
“Well, he’s a very handsome young man; and though he be dark, he may also be Endymion. Why not? Look at him; there he sits. ‘Tis the one just raising the glass to his lips.”
Lawrence Newt bent his head as he spoke toward the gay revelers, who sat, half a dozen in number, and the oldest not more than twenty-five, all dandies, all men of pleasure, at a neighboring table spread with a profuse and costly feast. Abel was the leader, and at the moment Arthur Merlin and Lawrence Newt turned to look he was telling some anecdote to which they all listened eagerly, while they sipped the red wine of France, poured carefully from a bottle reclining in a basket, and delicately coated with dust. Abel, with his glass in his hand and the glittering smile in his eye, told the story with careless grace, as if he were more amused with the listeners’ eagerness than with the anecdote itself. The extreme gayety of his life was already rubbing the boyish bloom from his face, but it developed his peculiar beauty more strikingly by removing that incongruous innocence which belongs to every boyish countenance.
As he looked at him, Arthur Merlin was exceedingly impressed by the air of reckless grace in his whole appearance, which harmonized so entirely with his face. Lawrence Newt watched his friend as the latter gazed at Abel. Lawrence always saw a great deal whenever he looked any where. Perhaps he perceived the secret dissatisfaction and feeling of sudden alarm which, without any apparent reason, Arthur felt as he looked at Abel.
But the longer Arthur Merlin looked at Abel the more curiously perplexed he was. The feeling which, if he had not been a painter so utterly devoted to his profession that all distractions were impossible, might have been called a nascent jealousy, was gradually merged in a half-consciousness that he had somewhere seen Abel Newt before, but where, and under what circumstances, he could not possibly remember. He watched him steadily, puzzling himself to recall that face.
Suddenly he clapped his hand upon the table. Lawrence Newt, who was looking at him, saw the perplexity of his expression smooth itself away; while Arthur Merlin, with an “oh!” of surprise, satisfaction, and alarm, exclaimed—and his color changed—