Yet his visits as financial counsel, as he called himself, did not destroy, they only heightened, the pleasure of the meetings of the Round Table.  For the group of friends still met.  They talked of poetry still.  They talked of many things, and perhaps thought of but a few.  The pleasure to all of them was evident enough; but it seemed more perplexed than formerly.  Hope Wayne felt it.  Amy Waring felt it.  Arthur Merlin felt it.  But not one of them could tell whether Lawrence Newt felt it.  There was a vague consciousness of something which nearly concerned them all, but not one of them could say precisely what it was—­except, possibly, Amy Waring; and except, certainly, Lawrence Newt.

For Aunt Martha’s question had drawn from Amy’s lips what had lain literally an unformed suspicion in her mind, until it leaped to life and rushed armed from her mouth.  Amy Waring saw how beautiful Hope Wayne was.  She knew how lovely in character she was.  And she was herself beautiful and lovely; so she said in her mind at once, “Why have I never seen this?  Why did I not know that he must of course love her?”

Then, if she reminded herself of the conversation she had held with Lawrence Newt about Arthur Merlin and Hope Wayne, she was only perplexed for a moment.  She knew that he could not but be honest; and she said quietly in her soul, “He did not know at that time how well worthy his love she was.”

CHAPTER LVIII.

THE HEALTH OF THE JUNIOR PARTNER.

“I call for a bumper!” said Lawrence Newt, when the fruit was placed upon the table.

The glasses were filled, and the host glanced around his table.  He did not rise, but he said: 

“Ladies and gentlemen, commercial honesty is not impossible, but it is rare.  I do not say that merchants are worse than other people; I only say that their temptations are as great, and that an honest man—­a man perfectly honest every how and every where—­is a wonder.  Whatever an honest man does is a benefit to all the rest of us.  If he become a lawyer, justice is more secure; if a doctor, quackery is in danger; if a clergyman, the devil trembles; if a shoemaker, we don’t wear rotten leather; if a merchant, we get thirty-six inches to the yard.  I have been long in business.  I have met many honest merchants.  But I know that ’tis hard for a merchant to be honest in New York.  Will you show me the place where ’tis easy?  When we are all honest because honesty is the best policy, then we are all ruined, because that is no honesty at all.  Why should a man make a million of dollars and lose his manhood?  He dies when he has won them, and what are the chances that he can win his manhood again in the next world as easily as he has won the dollars in this?  For he can’t carry his dollars with him.  Any firm, therefore, that gets an honest man into it gets an accession of the most available capital in the world.  This little feast is to celebrate the fact that my firm has been so enriched.  I invite you to drink the health of Gabriel Bennet, junior partner of the firm of Lawrence Newt & Co.!”