Hope Wayne shook her head thoughtfully.

"No," she said, "I see no way. I can only be ready to befriend him if the chance offers."

They said no more of him then, but Hope persuaded Fanny to come to Lawrence Newt's Christmas dinner, to which they had all been bidden.

"And I will make him understand about it," she said, as she went down the steps.

Mrs. Dinks sat upon the door-step for some time. There was nobody to see her whom she knew, and if there had been she would not have cared. She did not know how long she had been sitting there, for she was thinking of other things, but she was roused by hearing her husband's voice:

"Well, by G----! that's a G---- d---- pretty business--squatting on a door-step like a servant girl! Come in, I tell you, and shut the door."

From long habit Fanny did not pay the least attention to this order. But after some time she rose and closed the door, and clattered along the entry and up stairs, upon the worn and ragged carpet. Mr. Alfred Dinks returned to the parlor, pulled the bell violently, and when the sloppy servant girl appeared, glaring at him with the staring eyes, he immediately damned them, and wanted to know why in h---- he was kept waiting for his boots. The staring eyes vanished, and Mr. Dinks reclined upon the sofa, picking his teeth. Presently there was the slop--slop--slop of the girl along the entry. She opened the door, dropped the boots, and fled. Mr. Dinks immediately pulled the bell violently, walking across the room a greater distance than to his boots.

Slop--slop again. The door opened.

"Look here! If you don't bring me my boots, I'll come and pull the hair out of your head!" roared the master of the house.

The cowering little creature dashed at the boots with a wobegone look, and brought them to the sofa. Mr. Dinks took them in his hand, and turned them round contemptuously.

"G----! You call those boots blacked?"

He scratched his head a moment, enjoying the undisguised terror of the puny girl.

"If you don't black 'em better--if you don't put a brighter shine on to 'em, I'll--I'll--I'll put a shine on your face, you slut!"

The girl seemed to be all terrified eye as she looked at him, and then fled again, while he laughed.

"Ho! ho! ho! I'll teach 'em how--insolent curs! G---- d---- Paddies! What business have they coming over here? Ho! ho! ho!"

Leaving his slippers upon the parlor floor, Mr. Dinks mounted to his room and changed his coat. He tried the door of his wife's room as he passed out, and found it locked. He kicked it violently, and bawled,

"Good-morning, Mrs. Dinks! If Miss Wayne calls, tell her I've gone to tell Mr. Abel Newt that she repents, and wants to marry him; and I shall add that, having been through the wood, she picks up a crooked stick at last. Ho! ho! ho! (Kick.) Good-morning, Mrs. Dinks!"

He went heavily down stairs and slammed the front door, and was gone for the day.

When they were first married, after the bitter conviction that there was really no hope of old Burt's wealth, Fanny Dinks had carried matters with a high hand, domineering by her superior cleverness, and with a superiority that stung and exasperated her husband at every turn. Her bitter temper had gradually entirely eaten away the superficial, stupid good-humor of his younger days; and her fury of disappointment, carried into the detail of life, had gradually confirmed him in all his worst habits and obliterated the possibility of better. But the sour, superior nature was, as usual, unequal to the struggle. At last it spent itself in vain against the massive brutishness of opposition it had itself developed, and the reaction came, and now daily stunned her into hopeless apathy and abject indifference. Having lost the power of vexing, and beyond being really vexed by a being she so utterly despised as her husband, there was nothing left but pure passivity and inanition, into which she was rapidly declining.

Mr. Dinks kicked loudly and roared at the door, but Mrs. Dinks did not heed him. She was sitting in her dingy wrapper, rocking, and pondering upon the conversation of the morning--mechanically rocking, and thinking of the Christinas dinner at Uncle Lawrence's.

CHAPTER LXXXII.

THE LOST IS FOUND.

It was a whim of Lawrence's to give dinners; to have them good, and to ask only the people he wanted, and who he thought would enjoy themselves together.

"How much," he said, quietly, as he conversed with Mrs. Bennet, while his guests were assembling, "Edward Wynne looks like your sister Martha!"

It was the first time Mrs. Bennet had heard her sister's name mentioned by any stranger for years. But Lawrence spoke as calmly and naturally as if Martha Darro had been the subject of their conversation.

"Poor Martha!" said Mrs. Bennet, sadly; "how mysterious it was!"

Her husband saw her as she spoke, and he was so struck by the mournfulness of her face that he came quietly over.

"What is it?" he said, gently.

"For my son who was dead is alive again. He was lost and is found," said Lawrence Newt, solemnly.

Mrs. Bennet looked troubled, startled, almost frightened. The words were full of significance, the tone was not to be mistaken. She looked at Lawrence Newt with incredulous eagerness. He shook his head assentingly.

"Alive?" she gasped rather than asked.

"And well," he continued.

Mrs. Bennet closed her eyes in a silent prayer. A light so sweet stole over her matronly face that Lawrence Newt did not fear to say,

"And near you; come with me!"

They left the room together; and Amy Waring, who knew why they went, followed her aunt and Lawrence from the room.

The three stopped at the door of Lawrence Newt's study.

"Your sister is here," said he; and Amy and he remained outside while Mrs. Bennet entered the room.

It was more than twenty years since the sisters had met, and they clasped each other silently and wept for a long time.

"Martha!"

"Lucia!"

It was all they said; and wept again quietly.

Aunt Martha was dressed in sober black. Her face was very comely; for the hardness that came with a morbid and mistaken zeal was mellowed, and the sadness of experience softened it.

"I have lived not far from you, Lucia, all these long years."

"Martha! and you did not come to me?"

"I did not dare. Listen, Lucia. If a woman who had always gratified her love of admiration, and gloried in the power of gratifying it--who conquered men and loved to conquer them--who was a woman of ungoverned will and indomitable pride, should encounter--as how often they do?--a man who utterly conquered her, and betrayed her through the very weakness that springs from pride, do you not see that such a woman would go near to insanity--as I have been--believing that I had committed the unpardonable sin, and that no punishment could be painful enough?"

Mrs. Bennet looked alarmed.

"No, no; there is no reason," said her sister, observing it.

"The man came. I could not resist him. There was a form of marriage. I believed that it was I who had conquered. He left me; my child was born.

I appealed to Lawrence Newt, our old friend and playmate. He promised me faithful secrecy, and through him the child was sent where Gabriel was at school. Then I withdrew from both. I thought it was the will of God. I felt myself commanded to a living death--dead to every friend and kinsman--dead to every thing but my degradation and its punishment; and yet consciously close to you, near to all old haunts and familiar faces--lost to them all--lost to my child--" Her voice faltered, and the tears gushed from her eyes. "But I persevered. The old passionate pride was changed to a kind of religious frenzy. Lawrence Newt went and came to and from India. I was utterly lost to the world. I knew that my child would never know me, for Lawrence had promised that he would not betray me; and when I disappeared from his view, Lawrence gradually came to consider me dead. Then Amy discovered me among the poor souls she visited, and through Amy Lawrence Newt; and by them I have been led out of the valley of the shadow of death, and see the blessed light of love once more."