“Shall we go in again?” said Lawrence Newt.  But they saw some one approaching, and before they arose, while they were still silent, and Hope’s heart was like the dawning summer heaven, she suddenly heard Abel Newt’s words, and watched him, speechlessly, as he and his companion glided by her into the darkness.  It was the vision of a moment; but in the attitude, the tone, the whole impression, Hope Wayne instinctively felt treachery.

“Yes, let us go in!” she said to Lawrence Newt, as she rose calmly.

Abel had passed.  He could no more have stopped and shaken hands with Hope Wayne than he could have sung like a nightingale.  He could not even raise his head erect as he went by—­something very stern and very strong seemed to hold it down.

Miss Plumer’s head was also bent; she was waiting to hear the end of that sentence.  She thought society opened beautifully.  Such a handsome fellow in such a romantic spot, beginning his compliments in such a low, rich voice, with his hair almost brushing hers.  But he did not finish.  Abel Newt was perfectly silent.  He glided away with Grace Plumer into grateful gloom, and her ears, exquisitely apprehensive, caught from his lips not a word further.

Lawrence Newt rose as Hope requested, and they moved away.  She found her aunt, and stood by her side.  The young men were brought up and presented, and submitted their observations upon the weather, asked her how she liked New York—­were delighted to hear that she would pass the next winter in the city—­would show her then that New York had some claim to attention even from a Bostonian—­were charmed, really, with Mr. Bowdoin Beacon and—­and—­Mr. Alfred Dinks; at mention of which name they looked in her face in the most gentlemanly manner to see the red result, as if the remark had been a blister, but they saw only an unconscious abstraction in her own thoughts, mingled with an air of attention to what they were saying.

“Miss Hope,” said Lawrence Newt, who approached her with a young woman by his side, “I want you to know my friend Amy Waring.”

The two girls looked at each other and bowed.  Then they shook hands with a curious cordiality.

Amy Waring had dark eyes—­not round and hard and black—­not ebony eyes, but soft, sympathetic eyes, in which you expect to see images as lovely as the Eastern traveler sees when he remembers home and looks in the drop held in the palm of the hand of the magician’s boy.  They had the fresh, unworn, moist light of flowers early in June mornings, when they are full of sun and dew.  And there was the same transparent, rich, pure darkness in her complexion.  It was not swarthy, nor black, nor gloomy.  It did not look half Indian, nor even olive.  It was an illuminated shadow.

The two girls—­they were women, rather—­went together to a sofa and sat down.  Hope Wayne’s impulse was to lay her head upon her new friend’s shoulder and cry; for Hope was prostrated by the unexpected vision of Abel, as a strong man is unnerved by sudden physical pain.  She felt the overwhelming grief of a child, and longed to give way to it utterly.