"Well, let me see," continued the other, "what do you think of that young Southerner, Sligo Moultrie, who was at Saratoga? I used to think he had some of the feeling for Hope Wayne that Diana wanted in Endymion, and he has the face for a picture."

"Oh, he's not at all the person. He's much too dark, you see," answered Arthur, at once, with remarkable readiness.

"There's Alfred Dinks," said Lawrence Newt, smiling.

"Pish!" said Arthur, conclusively.

"Really, I can not think of any body," returned his companion, with a mock gravity that Arthur probably did not perceive. The young artist was evidently very closely occupied with the composition of his picture. He half-closed his eyes, as if he saw the canvas distinctly, and said,

"I should represent her just lighting upon the hill, you see, with a rich, moist flush upon her face, a cold splendor just melting into passion, half floating, as she comes, so softly superior, so queenly scornful of all the world but him. Jove! it would make a splendid picture!"

Lawrence Newt looked at his friend as he imagined the condescending Diana. The artist's face was a little raised as he spoke, as if he saw a stately vision. It was rapt in the intensity of fancy, and Lawrence knew perfectly well that he saw Hope Wayne's Endymion before him. But at the same moment his eye fell upon his nephew Abel sitting with a choice company of gay youths at another table. There was instantly a mischievous twinkle in Lawrence Newt's eye.

"Eureka! I have Endymion."

Arthur started and felt a half pang, as if Lawrence Newt had suddenly told him of Miss Wayne's engagement. He came instantly out of the clouds on Latinos, where he was dreaming.

"What did you say?" asked he.

"Why, of course, how dull I am! Abel will be your Endymion, if you can get him."

"Who is Abel?" inquired Arthur.

"Why, my nephew, Abel Don Juan Pelham Newt, of Grand Street, and Boniface Newt, Son, & Company, Dry Goods on Commission, Esquire," replied Lawrence Newt, with perfect gravity.

Arthur looked at him bewildered.

"Don't you know my nephew, Abel Newt?"

"No, not personally. I've heard of him, of course."

"Well, he's a very handsome young man; and though he be dark, he may also be Endymion. Why not? Look at him; there he sits. 'Tis the one just raising the glass to his lips."

Lawrence Newt bent his head as he spoke toward the gay revelers, who sat, half a dozen in number, and the oldest not more than twenty-five, all dandies, all men of pleasure, at a neighboring table spread with a profuse and costly feast. Abel was the leader, and at the moment Arthur Merlin and Lawrence Newt turned to look he was telling some anecdote to which they all listened eagerly, while they sipped the red wine of France, poured carefully from a bottle reclining in a basket, and delicately coated with dust. Abel, with his glass in his hand and the glittering smile in his eye, told the story with careless grace, as if he were more amused with the listeners' eagerness than with the anecdote itself. The extreme gayety of his life was already rubbing the boyish bloom from his face, but it developed his peculiar beauty more strikingly by removing that incongruous innocence which belongs to every boyish countenance.

As he looked at him, Arthur Merlin was exceedingly impressed by the air of reckless grace in his whole appearance, which harmonized so entirely with his face. Lawrence Newt watched his friend as the latter gazed at Abel. Lawrence always saw a great deal whenever he looked any where.

Perhaps he perceived the secret dissatisfaction and feeling of sudden alarm which, without any apparent reason, Arthur felt as he looked at Abel.

But the longer Arthur Merlin looked at Abel the more curiously perplexed he was. The feeling which, if he had not been a painter so utterly devoted to his profession that all distractions were impossible, might have been called a nascent jealousy, was gradually merged in a half-consciousness that he had somewhere seen Abel Newt before, but where, and under what circumstances, he could not possibly remember.

He watched him steadily, puzzling himself to recall that face.

Suddenly he clapped his hand upon the table. Lawrence Newt, who was looking at him, saw the perplexity of his expression smooth itself away; while Arthur Merlin, with an "oh!" of surprise, satisfaction, and alarm, exclaimed--and his color changed--

"Why, it's Manfred in the Coliseum!"

Lawrence Newt was confounded. Was Arthur, then, not deceiving himself, after all? Did he really take an interest in all these people only as a painter, and think of them merely as subjects for pictures?

Lawrence Newt was troubled. He had seen in Arthur with delight what he supposed the unconscious beginnings of affection for Hope Wayne. He had pleased himself in bringing them together--of course Amy Waring must be present too when he himself was, that any _tete-a-tete_ which arose might not be interrupted--and he had dreamed the most agreeable dreams. He knew Hope--he knew Arthur--it was evidently the hand of Heaven. He had even mentioned it confidentially to Amy Waring, who was profoundly interested, and who charitably did the same offices for Arthur with Hope Wayne that Lawrence Newt did for the young candidates with her. The conversation about the picture of Diana had only confirmed Lawrence Newt in his conviction that Arthur Merlin really loved Hope Wayne, whether he himself knew it or not.

And now was he all wrong, after all? Ridiculous! How could he be?

He tried to persuade himself that he was not. But he could not forget how persistently Arthur had spoken of Hope only as a fine Diana; and how, after evidently being struck with Abel Newt, he had merely exclaimed, with a kind of suppressed excitement, as if he saw what a striking picture he would make, "Manfred in the Coliseum!"

Lawrence Newt drank a glass of wine, thoughtfully. Then he smiled inwardly.

"It is not the first time I have been mistaken," thought he. "I shall have to take Amy Waring's advice about it."

As he and his friend passed the other table, on their way out, Abel nodded to his uncle; and as Arthur Merlin looked at him carefully, he was very sure that he saw the person whose face so singularly resembled that of Manfred's in the picture he had given Hope Wayne.

"I am all wrong," thought Lawrence Newt, ruefully, as they passed out into the street.

"Abel Newt, then, is Hope Wayne's somebody," thought Arthur Merlin, as he took his friend's arm.

CHAPTER XXXII.

MRS. THEODORE KINGFISHER AT HOME. _On dansera._

Society stared when it beheld Miss Hope Wayne entering the drawing-room of Mrs. Theodore Kingfisher.

"Really, Miss Wayne, I am delighted," said Mrs. Kingfisher, with a smile that might have been made at the same shop with the flowers that nodded over it.

Mrs. Kingfisher's friendship for Miss Wayne and her charming aunt consisted in two pieces of pasteboard, on which was printed, in German text, "Mrs. Theodore Kingfisher, St. John's Square," which she had left during the winter; and her pleasure at seeing her was genuine--not that she expected they would solace each other's souls with friendly intercourse, but that she knew Hope to be a famous beauty who had held herself retired until now at the very end of the season, when she appeared for the first time at her ball.

This reflection secured an unusually ardent reception for Mrs. Dagon, who followed Mrs. Dinks's party, and who, having made her salutation to the hostess, said to Mr. Boniface Newt, her nephew, who accompanied her,

"Now I'll go and stand by the pier-glass, so that I can rake the rooms.

And, Boniface, mind, I depend upon your getting me some lobster salad at supper, with plenty of dressing--mind, now, plenty of dressing."

Perched like a contemplative vulture by the pier, Mrs. Dagon declined chairs and sofas, but put her eye-glass to her eyes to spy out the land.

She had arrived upon the scene of action early. She always did.

"I want to see every body come in. There's a great deal in watching how people speak to each other. I've found out a great many things in that way, my dear, which were not suspected."

Presently a glass at the other end of the room that was bobbing up and down and about at everybody and thing--at the ceiling, and the wall, and the carpet--discovering the rouge upon cheeks whose ruddy freshness charmed less perceptive eyes--reducing the prettiest lace to the smallest terms in substance and price--detecting base cotton with one fell glance, and the part of the old dress ingeniously furbished to do duty as new--this philosophic and critical glass presently encountered Mrs. Dagon's in mid-career. The two ladies behind the glasses glared at each other for a moment, then bowed and nodded, like two Chinese idols set up on end at each extremity of the room.

"Good-evening, dear, good Mrs. Winslow Orry," said the smiling eyes of Mrs. Dagon to that lady. "How doubly scraggy you look in that worn-out old sea-green satin!" said the smiling old lady to herself.

"How do, darling Mrs. Dagon?" said the responsive glance of Mrs. Orry, with the most gracious effulgence of aspect, as she glared across the room--inwardly thinking, "What a silly old hag to lug that cotton lace cape all over town!"

People poured in. The rooms began to swarm. There was a warm odor of kid gloves, scent-bags, and heliotrope. There was an incessant fluttering of fans and bobbing of heads. One hundred gentlemen said, "How warm it is!"

One hundred ladies of the highest fashion answered, "Very." Fifty young men, who all wore coats, collars, and waistcoats that seemed to have been made in the lump, and all after the same pattern, stood speechless about the rooms, wondering what under heaven to do with their hands. Fifty older married men, who had solved that problem, folded their hands behind their backs, and beamed vaguely about, nodding their heads whenever they recognized any other head, and saying, "Good-evening," and then, after a little more beaming, "How are yer?" Waiters pushed about with trays covered with little glasses of lemonade and port-sangaree, which offered favorable openings to the unemployed young men and the married gentlemen, who crowded along with a glass in each hand, frightening all the ladies and begging every body's pardon.

All the Knickerbocker jewels glittered about the rooms. Mrs. Bleecker Van Kraut carried not less than thirty thousand dollars' worth of diamonds upon her person--at least that was Mrs. Orry's deliberate conclusion after a careful estimate. Mrs. Dagon, when she heard what Mrs. Orry said, merely exclaimed, "Fiddle! Anastatia Orry can tell the price of lutestring a yard because Winslow Orry failed in that business, but she knows as much of diamonds as an elephant of good manners."