CHAPTER XVIII.

OLD FRIENDS AND NEW.

Lawrence Newt had called at Bunker’s, and found Mrs. Dinks and Miss Hope Wayne.  They were sitting at the window upon Broadway watching the promenaders along that famous thoroughfare; for thirty years ago the fashionable walk was between the Park and the Battery, and Bunker’s was close to Morris Street, a little above the Bowling Green.

When Mr. Newt was announced Hope Wayne felt as if she were suffocating.  She knew but one person of that name.  Her aunt supposed it to be the husband of her friend, Mrs. Nancy Newt, whom she had seen upon a previous visit to New York this same summer.  They both looked up and saw a gentleman they had never seen before.  He bowed pleasantly, and said,

“Ladies, my name is Lawrence Newt.”

There was a touch of quaintness in his manner, as in his dress.

“You will find the city quite deserted,” said he.  “But I have called with an invitation from my sister, Mrs. Boniface Newt, for this evening to a small party.  She incloses her card, and begs you to waive the formality of a call.”

That was the way that Lawrence Newt and Hope Wayne came to be sitting on the cane sofa under the great orange-tree in Boniface Newt’s conservatory.

They had entered the room and made their bows to Mrs. Nancy; and Mr. Lawrence, wishing to talk to Miss Hope, had led her by another way to the conservatory, and so Mr. Abel had failed to see them.

As they sat under the tree Lawrence Newt conversed with Hope in a tone of earnest and respectful tenderness that touched her heart.  She could not understand the winning kindliness of his manner, nor could she resist it.  He spoke of her home with an accuracy of detail that surprised her.

“It was not the same house in my day, and you, perhaps, hardly remember much of the old one.  The house is changed, but nothing else; no, nothing else,” he added, musingly, and with the same dreamy expression in his eyes that was in them when he leaned against his office window and watched the ships—­while his mind sailed swifter and farther than they.

“They can not touch the waving outline of the hills that you see from the lawn, nor the pine-trees that shade the windows.  Does the little brook still flow in the meadow below?  And do you understand the pine-trees?  Do they tell any tales?”

He asked it with a half-mournful gayety.  He asked as if he both longed and feared that she should say, “Yes, they have told me:  I know all.”

The murmurs of the singing came floating out to them as they sat.  Hope was happy and trustful.  She was in the house of Abel—­she should see him—­she should hear him!  And this dear gentleman—­not exactly like a father nor an uncle—­well, yes, perhaps a young uncle—­he is brother of Abel’s mother, and he mysteriously knows so much about Pinewood, and his smiling voice has a tear in it as he speaks of old days.  I love him already—­I trust him entirely—­I have found a friend.