“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.