She colored a little--said that it was warm--and rose to go.

The cold black eyes of Miss Fanny Newt suddenly glittered upon them.

"Will you go home with us, Miss Wayne?"

"Thank you, I am just coming;" and Hope passed into the wood.

When Arthur Merlin was left alone he quietly lighted a cigar, opened his port-folio and spread it before him, then sharpened a pencil and began to sketch. But while he looked at the tree before him, and mechanically transferred it to the paper, he puffed and meditated.

He saw that Hope Wayne was constantly with other people, and yet he felt that she was a woman who would naturally like her own society. He also saw that there was no person then at Saratoga in whom she had such an interest that she would prefer him to her own society.

And yet she was always seeking the distraction of other people.

Puff--puff--puff.

Then there was something that made the society of her own thoughts unpleasant--almost intolerable.

Mr. Arthur Merlin vigorously rubbed out with a piece of stale bread a false line he had drawn.

What is that something--or some-bod-y?

He stopped sketching, and puffed for a long time.

As he returned at sunset Hope Wayne was standing upon the piazza of the hotel.

"Have you been successful?" asked she, dawning upon him.

"You shall judge."

He showed her his sketch of a tree-stump.

"Good; but a little careless," she said.

"Do you draw, Miss Wayne?"

A curious light glimmered across her face, for she remembered where she had last heard those words. She shrank a little, almost imperceptibly, as if her eyes had been suddenly dazzled. Then a little more distantly--not much more, but Arthur had remarked every thing--she said:

"Yes, I draw a little. Good-evening."

"Stop, please, Miss Wayne!" exclaimed Arthur, as he saw that she was going. She turned and smiled--a smile that seemed to him like starlight, it was so clear and cool and dim.

"I have drawn this for you, Miss Wayne."

She bent and took the sketch which he drew from his port-folio.

"It is Manfred in the Coliseum," said he.

She glanced at it; but the smile faded entirely. Arthur stared at her in astonishment as the blood slowly ebbed from her cheeks, then streamed back again. The head of Manfred was the head of Abel Newt. Hope Wayne looked from the sketch to the artist, searching him with her eye to discover if he knew what he was doing. Arthur was sincerely unconscious.

Hope Wayne dropped the paper almost involuntarily. It floated into the road.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Merlin," said she, making a step to recover it.

He was before her, and handed it to her again.

"Thank you," said she, quietly, and went in.

It was still twilight, and Arthur lighted a cigar and sat down to a meditation. The result of it was clear enough.

"That head looks like somebody, and that somebody is Hope Wayne's secret." Puff--puff--puff.

"Where did I get that head?" He could not remember. "Tut!" cried he, suddenly bringing his chair down upon its legs with a force that knocked his cigar out of his mouth, "I copied it from a head which Jim Greenidge has, and which he says was one of his school-fellows."

Meanwhile Hope Wayne had carefully locked the door of her room. Then she hurriedly tore the sketch into the smallest possible pieces, laid them in her hand, opened the window, and whiffed them away into the dark.

CHAPTER XXIII.

BONIFACE NEWT, SON, AND CO., DRY GOODS ON COMMISSION.

Abel Newt smoked a great many cigars to enable him to see his position clearly.

When he told his mother that he could not accompany her to the Springs because he was about entering his father's counting-room, it was not so much because he was enamored of business as that his future relations with Hope were entirely doubtful, and he did not wish to complicate them by exposing himself to the chances of Saratoga.

"Business, of course, is the only career in this country, my son," said Boniface Newt. "What men want, and women too, is money. What is this city of New York? A combination of men and machines for making money. Every body respects a rich man. They may laugh at him behind his back. They may sneer at his ignorance and awkwardness, and all that sort of thing, but they respect his money. Now there's old Jacob Van Boozenberg. I say to you in strict confidence, my son, that there was never a greater fool than that man. He absolutely knows nothing at all. When he dies he will be no more missed in this world than an old dead stage-horse who is made into a manure heap. He is coarse, and vulgar, and mean. His daughter Kate married his clerk, young Tom Witchet--not a cent, you know, but five hundred dollars salary. 'Twas against the old man's will, and he shut his door, and his purse, and his heart. He turned Witchet away; told his daughter that she might lie in the bed she had made for herself; told Witchet that he was a rotten young swindler, and that, as he had married his daughter for her money, he'd be d----d if he wouldn't be up with him, and deuce of a cent should they get from him. They live I don't know where, nor how. Some of her old friends send her money--actually give five-dollar bills to old Jacob Van Boozenberg's daughter, somewhere over by the North River. Every body knows it, you know; but, for all that, we have to make bows to old Van B. Don't we want accommodations? Look here, Abel; if Jacob were not worth a million of dollars, he would be of less consequence than the old fellow who sells apples at the corner of his bank. But as it is, we all agree that he is a shrewd, sensible old fellow; rough in some of his ways--full of little prejudices--rather sharp; and as for Mrs. Tom Witchet, why, if girls will run away, and all that sort of thing, they must take the consequences, you know. Of course they must. Where should we be if every rich merchant's daughters were at the mercy of his clerks? I'm sorry for all this. It's sad, you know. It's positively melancholy. It troubles me. Ah, yes! where was I? Oh, I was saying that money is the respectable thing. And mark, Abel, if this were the Millennium, things would be very different. But it isn't the Millennium. It's give one and take two, if you can get it. That's what it is here; and let him who wants to, kick against the pricks."

Abel hung his legs over the arms of the office-chairs in the counting-room, and listened gravely.

"I don't suppose, Sir, that 'tis money _as_ money that is worth having.

It is only money as the representative of intelligence and refinement, of books, pictures, society--as a vast influence and means of charity; is it not, Sir?"

Upon which Mr. Abel Newt blew a prodigious cloud of smoke.

Mr. Boniface Newt responded, "Oh fiddle! that's all very fine. But my answer to that is Jacob Van Boozenberg."

"Bless my soul! here he comes. Abel put your legs down! throw that cigar away!"

The great man came in. His clothes were snuffy and baggy--so was his face.

"Good-mornin', Mr. Newt. Beautiful mornin'. I sez to ma this mornin', ma, sez I, I should like to go to the country to-day, sez I. Go 'long; pa!

sez she. Werry well, sez I, I'll go 'long if you'll go too. Ma she laughed; she know'd I wasn't in earnest. She know'd 'twasn't only a joke."

Mr. Van Boozenberg drew out a large red bandana handkerchief, and blew his nose as if it had been a trumpet sounding a charge.

Messrs. Newt & Son smiled sympathetically. The junior partner observed, cheerfully,