“Hope,” said Mrs. Simcoe, “the horses will be brought up.  We had better walk home.  Here, my dear!”

“I can only see you at home,” Hope said, in a low voice, as she rose.

“Then we part here forever,” he replied.  “I am sorry.”

Still there was no reproach; it was only a deep sadness which softened that musical voice.

“Forever!” he repeated slowly, with low, remorseless music.

Hope Wayne trembled, but he did not see it.

“I am sorry, too,” she said, in a hurried whisper, as she moved slowly toward Mrs. Simcoe.  Abel Newt was disappointed.

“Good-by forever, Miss Wayne!” he said.  He could not see Hope’s paler face as she heard the more formal address, and knew by it that he was offended.

“Good-by!” was all he caught as Hope Wayne took Mrs. Simcoe’s arm and walked away.

CHAPTER XIII.

SOCIETY.

Tradition declares that the family of Newt has been uniformly respectable but honest—­so respectable, indeed, that Mr. Boniface Newt, the father of Abel, a celebrated New York merchant and a Tammany Sachem, had a crest.  He had even buttons for his coachman’s coat with a stag’s head engraved upon them.  The same device was upon his sealring.  It appeared upon his carriage door.  It figured on the edges of his dinner-service.  It was worked into the ground glass of the door that led from his dining-room to the back stairs.  He had his paper stamped with it; and a great many of his neighbors, thinking it a neat and becoming ornament, imitated him in its generous use.

Mrs. Newt’s family had a crest also.  She was a Magot—­another of the fine old families which came to this country at the earliest possible period.  The Magots, however, had no buttons upon their coachman’s coat; one reason of which omission was, perhaps, that they had no coachman.  But when the ladies of the Magot family went visiting or shopping they hired a carriage, and insisted that the driver should brush his hat and black his boots; so that it was not every body who knew that it was a livery equipage.

Their friends did, of course; but there were a great many people from the country who gazed at it, in passing, with the same emotion with which they would have contemplated a private carriage; which was highly gratifying to the feelings of the Magots.

Their friends knew it, but friends never remark upon such things.  There was old Mrs. Beriah Dagon—­dowager Mrs. Dagon, she was called—­aunt of Mr. Newt, who never said, “I see the Magots have hired a hackney-coach from Jobbers to make calls in.  They quarreled with Gudging over his last bill.  Medora Magot has turned her last year’s silk, which is a little stained and worn; but then it does just as well.”

By-and-by her nephew Boniface married Medora’s sister, Nancy.

It was Mrs. Dagon who sat with Mrs. Newt in her parlor, and said to her,