After a while she said, "Don't you think, Hope, you could make up your mind to go to Mrs. Kingfisher's ball next week? You know you haven't been out at all."

"Perhaps," replied Hope, doubtfully.

"Just as you please, dear. I think it is quite as well to stay away if you want to. Your retirement is very natural, and proper, and beautiful, under the circumstances, although it is unusual. Of course I don't fully understand. But I have perfect confidence in the justice of your reasons."

Mrs. Dinks looked at Hope tenderly and sagaciously as she said this, and smiled meaningly.

Hope was entirely bewildered. Then a sudden apprehension shot through her mind as she thought of what her aunt had said. She asked suddenly and a little proudly,

"What do you mean by 'circumstances,' aunt?"

Mrs. Dinks was uneasy in her turn. But she pushed bravely on, and said kindly,

"Why on earth shouldn't I know why you are unwilling to have it known, Hope? You know I am as still as the grave."

"Have what known, aunt?" asked Hope.

"Why, dear," replied Mrs. Dinks, confused by Hope's air of innocence, "your engagement, of course."

"My engagement?" said Hope, with a look of utter amazement; "to whom, I should like to know?"

Mrs. Dinks looked at her for an instant, and asked, in a clear, dry tone:

"Are you not engaged to Alfred?"

Hope Wayne's look of anxious surprise melted into an expression of intense amusement.

"To Alfred Dinks!" said she, in a slow, incredulous tone, and with her eyes sparkling with laughter. "Why, my dear aunt?"

Mrs. Dinks was overwhelmed by a sudden consciousness of bitter disappointment, mingled with an exasperating conviction that she had been somehow duped. The tone was thick in which she answered.

"What is the meaning of this? Hope, are you deceiving me?"

She knew Hope was not deceiving her as well as she knew that they were sitting together in the carriage.

Hope's reply was a clear, ringing, irresistible laugh. Then she said,

"It's high time I went to balls, I see. I will go to Mrs. Kingfisher's.

But, dear aunt, have you seriously believed such a story?"

"Do I think my son is a liar?" replied Mrs. Dinks, sardonically.

The laugh faded from Hope's face.

"Did he say so?" asked she.

"Certainly he did."

"Alfred Dinks told you I was engaged to him?"

"Alfred Dinks told me you were engaged to him."

They drove on for some time without speaking.

"What does he mean by using my name in that way?" said Hope, with the Diana look in her eyes.

"Oh! that you must settle with him," replied the other. "I'm sure I don't know."

And Field-marshal Mrs. Dinks settled herself back upon the seat and said no more. Hope Wayne sat silent and erect by her side.

CHAPTER XXXI.

AT DELMONICO'S.

Lawrence Newt had watched with the warmest sympathy the rapid development of the friendship between Amy Waring and Hope Wayne. He aided it in every way. He called in the assistance of Arthur Merlin, who was in some doubt whether his devotion to his art would allow him to desert it for a moment. But as the doubt only lasted while Lawrence Newt was unfolding a plan he had of reading books aloud with the ladies--and--in fact, a great many other praiseworthy plans which all implied a constant meeting with Miss Waring and Miss Wayne, Mr. Merlin did not delay his co-operation in all Mr. Newt's efforts.

And so they met at Amy Waring's house very often and pretended to read, and really did read, several books together aloud. Ostensibly poetry was pursued at the meetings of what Lawrence Newt called the Round Table.

"Why not? We have our King Arthur, and our Merlin the Enchanter," he said.

"A speech from Mr. Merlin," cried Amy, gayly, while Hope looked up from her work with encouraging, queenly eyes. Arthur looked at them eagerly.

"Oh, Diana! Diana!" he thought, but did not say. That was the only speech he made, and nobody heard it.

The meetings of the Round Table were devoted to poetry, but of a very practical kind. It was pure romance, but without any thing technically romantic. Mrs. Waring often sat with the little party, and, as she worked, talked with Lawrence Newt of earlier days--"days when you were not born, dears," she said, cheerfully, as if to appropriate Mr. Newt.

And whenever she made this kind of allusion Amy's work became very intricate indeed, demanding her closest attention. But Hope Wayne, remembering her first evening in his society, raised her eyes again with curiosity, and as she did so Lawrence smiled kindly and gravely, and his eyes hung upon hers as if he saw again what he had thought never to see; while Hope resolved that she would ask him under what circumstances he had known Pinewood. But the opportunity had not yet arrived. She did not wish to ask before the others. There are some secrets that we involuntarily respect, while we only know that they are secrets.

The more Arthur Merlin saw of Hope Wayne the more delighted he was to think how impossible it was for him, in view of his profound devotion to his art, to think of beautiful women in any other light than that of picturesque subjects.

"Really, Mr. Newt," Arthur said to him one evening as they were dining together at Delmonico's--which was then in William Street--"if I were to paint a picture of Diana when she loved Endymion--a picture, by-the-by, which I intend to paint--I should want to ask Miss Wayne to sit to me for the principal figure. It is really remarkable what a subdued splendor there is about her--Diana blushing, you know, as it were--the moon delicately veiled in cloud. It would be superb, I assure you."

Lawrence Newt smiled--he often smiled--as he wiped his mouth, and asked,

"Who would you ask to sit for Endymion?"

"Well, let me see," replied Arthur, cheerfully, and pondering as if to determine who was exactly the man. It was really beautiful to see his exclusive enthusiasm for his art. "Let me see. How would it do to paint an ideal figure for Endymion?"

"No, no," said Lawrence Newt, laughing; "art must get its ideal out of the real. I demand a good, solid, flesh-and-blood Endymion."

"I can't just think of any body," replied Arthur Merlin, musingly, looking upon the floor, and thinking so intently of Hope, in order to image to himself a proper Endymion, that he quite forgot to think of the candidates for that figure.

"How would my young friend Hal Battlebury answer?" asked Lawrence Newt.

"Oh, not at all," replied Arthur, promptly; "he's too light, you know."