“I am very sorry you should have had the pain of seeing such a spectacle, and I am ashamed my first introduction to you should have been at such a time.”

Hope Wayne lingered, looking on the ground.

“I think, indeed,” continued Abel, “that you owe me an opportunity of making a better impression.”

“Hope!  Hope!” came floating the sound of a distant voice calling in the garden.

Hope Wayne turned her head toward the voice, but her eyes looked upon the ground, and her feet still lingered.

“I have known you so long, and yet have never spoken to you,” said the musical voice at her side; “I have seen you so constantly in church, and I have even tried sometimes—­I confess it—­to catch a glance from you as you came out.  But I am not sorry, for now—­”

“Hope!  Hope!” called the voice from the garden.

Hope looked dreamily in that direction, not as if she heard it, but as if she were listening to something in her mind.

“Now I meet you here on this lovely lawn in your own beautiful home.  Do you know that your grandfather permits me to sketch the place?”

“Do you draw, Mr. Newt?” asked Hope Wayne, in a tone which seemed to Abel to trickle along his nerves, so exquisite and prolonged was the pleasure it gave him to hear her call him by name.  How did she know it? thought he.

“Yes, I draw, and am very fond of it,” he answered, as he untied his port-folio.  “I do not dare to say that I am proud of my drawing—­and yet you may perhaps recognize this, if you will look a moment.”

“Hope!  Hope!” came the voice again from the garden.  Abel heard it—­perhaps Hope did not.  He was busily opening his port-folio and turning over the drawings, and stepped closer to her, as he said: 

“There! now, what is that?” and he handed her a sketch.

Hope looked at it and smiled.

“That is the farther shore of the pond with the spire; how very pretty it is!”

“And this?”

“Oh! that is the old church, and there is Mr. Gray’s face at the window.  How good they are!  You draw very well, Mr. Newt.”

“Do you draw, Miss Wayne?”

“I’ve had plenty of lessons,” replied Hope, smiling; “but I can’t draw from nature very well.”

“What do you sketch, then?”

“Well, scenes and figures out of books.”

“How very pleasant that must be!  That’s a better style than mine.”

“Why so?”

“Because we can never draw any thing as handsome as it seems to us.  You can go and see the pond with your own eyes, and then no picture will seem worth having.”  He paused.  “There is another reason, too, I suppose.”

“What is that?” asked Hope, looking at her companion.

“Well,” he answered, smiling, “because life in books is always so much better than real life!”

“Is it so?” said Hope, musingly.

“Yes, certainly.  People are always brave, and beautiful, and good, in books.  An author may make them do and say just what he and all the world want them to, and it all seems right.  And then they do such splendidly impossible things!”