The hero of the day was so engaged in conversation with Miss May Newt that he said very little to his neighbor upon the other side, who was no other than Hope Wayne. She had been watching very curiously a young man with black curls and eyes, who seemed to have words only for his neighbor, Miss Ellen Bennet. She presently turned and asked Gabriel if she had never seen him before. “I have, surely, some glimmering remembrance of that face,” she said, studying it closely.
Her question recalled a day which was strangely remote and unreal in Gabriel’s memory. He even half blushed, as if Miss Wayne had reminded him of some early treason to a homage which he felt in the very bottom of his heart for his blue-eyed neighbor. But the calm, unsuspicious sweetness of Hope Wayne’s face consoled him. He looked at her for a moment without speaking. It was really but a moment, yet, as he looked, he lay in a heavily-testered bed—he heard the beating of the sea upon the shore—he saw the sage Mentor, the ghostly Calypso putting aside the curtain—for a moment he was once more the little school-boy, bruised and ill at Pinewood; but this face—no longer a girl’s face—no longer anxious, but sweet, serene, and tender—was this the half-haughty face he had seen and worshipped in the old village church—the face whose eyes of sympathy, but not of love, had filled his heart with such exquisite pain?
“That young man, Miss Wayne, is Edward Wynne,” he said, in reply to the question.
It did not seem to resolve her perplexity.
“I don’t recall the name,” she answered. “I think he must remind me of some one I have known.”
“He is as black as Abel Newt,” said Gabriel, looking with his clear eyes at Hope Wayne.
“But much handsomer than Mr. Newt now is,” she answered, with perfect unconcern. “His eyes are softer; and, in fact,” she said, smiling pleasantly, “I am not surprised to see what a willing listener his neighbor is. I wish I could recall him. I don’t think that he resembles Mr. Newt at all, except in complexion.”
Arthur Merlin heard every word, and watched every movement, and marked every expression of Hope Wayne’s, at whose other hand he sat, during this little remark. Gabriel said, in reply to it,
“The truth is, Miss Wayne, you have seen him before. The first time you ever saw me he was with me.”
The clear eyes of the young man were turned full upon her again.