“You think I want to marry Hope Wayne?”
“Of course I do. So does every body else. Do you suppose we have not known of your intimacies? Do you think we have heard nothing of your meetings all winter with that artist and Amy Waring, and your reading poetry, and your talking poetry?” said Fanny, with infinite contempt.
There was a look of singular perplexity upon the face of Lawrence Newt. He was a man not often surprised, but he seemed to be surprised and even troubled now. He looked musingly across the room to Hope Wayne, who was sitting engaged in earnest conversation with Mrs. Simcoe. In her whole bearing and aspect there was that purity and kindliness which are always associated with blue eyes and golden hair, and which made the painters paint the angels as fair women. A lambent light played all over her form, and to Lawrence Newt’s eyes she had never seemed so beautiful. The girlish quiet which he had first known in her had melted into a sweet composure—a dignified serenity which comes only with experience. The light wind that blew in at the window by which she sat raised her hair gently, as if invisible fingers were touching her with airy benedictions. Was it so strange that such a woman should be loved? Was it not strange that any man should see much of her, be a great deal with her, and not love her? Was Fanny’s suspicion, was the world’s gossip, unnatural?
He asked himself these questions as he looked at her, while a cloud of thoughts and memories floated through his mind.
Yet a close observer, who could read men’s hearts in their faces—and that could be more easily done with every one else than with him—would have seen another expression gradually supplanting the first, or mingling with it rather: a look as of joy at some unexpected discovery—as if, for instance, he had said to himself, “She must be very dear whom I love so deeply that it has not occurred to me I could love this angel!”
Something of that kind, perhaps; at least, something that brought a transfigured cheerfulness into his face.
“Believe me, Fanny,” he said, at length, “I am not anxious to marry Miss Wayne; nor would she marry me if I asked her.”
Then he rose and passed across the room to her side.
“We were talking about the future life of the mistress of this mansion,” said Hope Wayne to Lawrence as he joined them.
“What does she wish?” asked he; “that is always the first question.”