“Oh, yes, I remember now!” she answered. “He was your friend in that terrible battle with Abel Newt. It seems long ago, does it not?”
However far away it may have seemed, it was apparently a remembrance that roused no especial emotion in Miss Hope Wayne’s heart. Having satisfied herself, she released the attention of Gabriel, who had other subjects of conversation with May Newt than his quarrel with her brother for the favor of Hope Wayne.
But Arthur Merlin observed that while Hope Wayne listened with her ears to him, with her eyes she listened to Lawrence Newt. His simple, unselfish, and therefore unconscious urbanity—his genial, kindly humor—and the soft, manly earnestness of his face, were not unheeded—how could they be?—by her. Since the day the will was read he had been a faithful friend and counselor. It was he who negotiated for her house. It was he who daily called and gave her a thousand counsels in the details of management, of which every woman who comes into a large property has such constant need. And in all the minor arrangements of business she found in him the same skill and knowledge, combined with a womanly reserve and softness, which had first so strongly attracted her.
Yet his visits as financial counsel, as he called himself, did not destroy, they only heightened, the pleasure of the meetings of the Round Table. For the group of friends still met. They talked of poetry still. They talked of many things, and perhaps thought of but a few. The pleasure to all of them was evident enough; but it seemed more perplexed than formerly. Hope Wayne felt it. Amy Waring felt it. Arthur Merlin felt it. But not one of them could tell whether Lawrence Newt felt it. There was a vague consciousness of something which nearly concerned them all, but not one of them could say precisely what it was—except, possibly, Amy Waring; and except, certainly, Lawrence Newt.
For Aunt Martha’s question had drawn from Amy’s lips what had lain literally an unformed suspicion in her mind, until it leaped to life and rushed armed from her mouth. Amy Waring saw how beautiful Hope Wayne was. She knew how lovely in character she was. And she was herself beautiful and lovely; so she said in her mind at once, “Why have I never seen this? Why did I not know that he must of course love her?”
Then, if she reminded herself of the conversation she had held with Lawrence Newt about Arthur Merlin and Hope Wayne, she was only perplexed for a moment. She knew that he could not but be honest; and she said quietly in her soul, “He did not know at that time how well worthy his love she was.”
CHAPTER LVIII. — THE HEALTH OF THE JUNIOR PARTNER.
“I call for a bumper!” said Lawrence Newt, when the fruit was placed upon the table.