“I thank you from my heart,” Lawrence Newt said to her.  And taking her hand, he bent over it and kissed it.  She sat looking at him, and at length said,

“Mayn’t I do any thing to show my gratitude?”

“You have already done more than I deserve,” replied Lawrence Newt.  “I must go now.  Good-by!  God bless you!”

She heard his quick footfalls as he descended the stairs.  For a long time the sombre woman sat rocking idly to and fro, holding her work in her hand, and with her eyes fixed upon the floor.  She did not seem to see clearly, whatever it might be she was looking at.  She shook out her work and straightened it, and folded it regularly, and looked at it as if the secret would pop out of the proper angle if she could only find it.  Then she creased it and crimped it—­still she could not see.  Then she took a few stitches slowly, regarding fixedly a corner of the room as if the thought she was in search of was a mouse, and might at any moment run out of his hole and over the floor.

And after all the looking, she shook her head intelligently and fell quietly to work, as if the mystery were plain enough, saying to herself,

“Why didn’t I trust a girl’s instinct who loves as Amy does?  Of course she is right.  Dear! dear!  Of course he loves Hope Wayne.”

CHAPTER LV.

ARTHUR MERLIN’S GREAT PICTURE.

Arthur Merlin had sketched his great picture of Diana and Endymion a hundred times.  He talked of it with his friends, and smoked scores of boxes of cigars during the conversations.  He had completed what he called the study for the work, which represented, he said, the Goddess alighting upon Latmos while Endymion slept.  He pointed out to his companions, especially to Lawrence Newt, the pure antique classical air of the composition.

“You know,” he said, as he turned his head and moved his hands over the study as if drawing in the air, “you know it ought somehow to seem silent, and cool, and remote; for it is ancient Greece, Diana, and midnight.  You see?”

Then came a vast cloud of smoke from his mouth, as if to assist the eyes of the spectator.

“Oh yes, I see,” said every one of his companions—­especially Lawrence Newt, who did see, indeed, but saw only a head of Hope Wayne in a mist.  The Endymion, the mountain, the Greece, the antiquity, were all vigorous assumptions of the artist.  The study for his great picture was simply an unfinished portrait of Hope Wayne.

Aunt Winnifred, who sometimes came into her nephew’s studio, saw the study one day, and exclaimed, sorrowfully,

“Oh, Arthur!  Arthur!”

The young man, who was busily mixing colors upon his pallet, and humming, as he smoked, “’Tis my delight of a shiny night,” turned in dismay, thinking his aunt was suddenly ill.

“My dear aunt!” and he laid down his pallet and ran toward her.