“Oh! mercy! mercy!” exclaimed Mrs. Newt.  “What shall we do?  What will people say?”

“Good-morning, ladies!” said Mrs. Dinks, with a comprehensive bow.  She was troubled, but not overwhelmed; for she believed that the rich Mr. Newt would not, of course, allow his daughter to suffer.  Mrs. Dagon was more profoundly persuaded than ever that Mrs. Dinks had managed the whole matter.

“Nancy,” said she, as the door closed upon Mrs. Dinks, “it is a scheming, artful woman.  Her son has no money, and I doubt if he ever will have any.  Boniface will be implacable.  I know him.  He is capable of seeing his daughter suffer.  Fanny has made a frightful mistake.  Poor Fanny! she was not so clever as she thought herself.  There is only one hope—­that is in old Burt.  I think we had better present that view chiefly to Boniface.  We must concede the poverty, but insist and enlarge upon the prospect.  No Newt ought to be allowed to suffer if we can help it.  Poor Fanny!  She was always pert, but not quite so smart as she thought herself!”

Mrs. Dagon indulged in a low chuckle of triumph, while Mrs. Newt was overwhelmed with a vague apprehension that all her husband’s wrath at his daughter’s marriage would be visited upon her.

CHAPTER XL.

AT THE ROUND TABLE.

Mrs. Dinks had informed Hope that she was going home.  That lady was satisfied, by her conversation with Mrs. Newt, that it would be useless for her to see Mr. Newt—­that it was one of the cases in which facts and events plead much more persuasively than words.  She was sure the rich merchant would not allow his daughter to suffer.  Fathers do so in novels, thought she.  Of course they do, for it is necessary to the interest of the story.  And old Van Boozenberg does in life, thought she.  Of course he does.  But he is an illiterate, vulgar, hard old brute.  Mr. Newt is of another kind.  She had herself read his name as director of at least seven different associations for doing good to men and women.

But Mrs. Dinks still delayed her departure.  She knew that there was no reason for her staying, but she staid.  She loved her son dearly.  She was unwilling to leave him while his future was so dismally uncertain; and every week she informed Hope that she was on the point of going.

Hope Wayne was not sorry to remain.  Perhaps she also had her purposes.  At Saratoga, in the previous summer, Arthur Merlin had remarked her incessant restlessness, and had connected it with the picture and the likeness of somebody.  But when afterward, in New York, he cleared up the mystery and resolved who the somebody was, to his great surprise he observed, at the same time, that the restlessness of Hope Wayne was gone.  From the months of seclusion which she had imposed upon herself he saw that she emerged older, calmer, and lovelier than he had ever seen her.  The calmness was, indeed, a little unnatural.  To his sensitive eye—­for, as he said to Lawrence Newt, in explanation of his close observation, it is wonderful how sensitive an exclusive devotion to art will make the eye—­to his eye the calmness was still too calm, as the gayety had been too gay.