“I am glad to know you, Miss Wayne!” said Amy Waring, in a cordial, cheerful voice, with a pleasant smile.

Hope bowed, and thanked her.

“I find that Mr. Newt’s friends always prove to be mine,” continued Amy.

“I am glad of it; but I don’t know why I am his friend,” said Hope.  “I never saw him until to-day.  He must have lived in Delafield.  Do you know how that is?”

She found conversation a great relief, and longed to give way to a kind of proud, indignant volubility.

“No; but he seems to have lived every where, to have seen every thing, and to have known every body.  A very useful acquaintance, I assure you!” said Amy, smiling.

“Is he married?” asked Hope.

There was the least little blush upon Amy’s cheek as she heard this question; but so slight, that if any body had thought he observed it, he would have looked again and said, “No, I was mistaken,” Perhaps, too, there was the least little fluttering of a heart otherwise unconscious.  But words are like breezes that blow hither and thither, and the leaves upon the most secluded trees in the very inmost covert of the wood may sometimes feel a breath, and stir with responsive music before they are aware.

Amy Waring replied, pleasantly, that he was not married.  Hope Wayne said, “What a pity!” Amy smiled, and asked,

“Why a pity?”

“Because such a man would be so happy if he were married, and would make others so happy!  He has been in love, you may be sure.”

“Yes,” replied Amy; “I have no doubt of that.  We don’t see men of forty, or so, who have not been touched—­”

“By what?” asked Lawrence Newt, who had come up silently, and now stood beside her.

“Yes, by what?” interposed Miss Fanny, who had been very busy during the whole evening, trying to get into her hands the threads of the various interests that she saw flying and streaming all around her.  She had seen Mr. Alfred Dinks devoted to Miss Wayne, and was therefore confirmed in her belief that they were engaged.  She had seen Abel flirting with Grace, and was therefore satisfied that he cared nothing about her.  She had done the best she could with Alfred Dinks, but was extremely dissatisfied with her best; and, seeing Hope and Amy together, she had been hovering about them for a long time, anxious to overhear or to join in.

“Really,” said Amy, looking up with a smile, “I was making a very innocent remark.”

“Perfectly innocent, I’m sure!” replied Fanny, in her sweetest manner.  It was such a different sweetness from Amy Waring’s, that Hope turned and looked very curiously at Miss Fanny.

“There are few men of forty who have not been in love,” said Amy, calmly.  “That is what I was saying.”

As there was only one man of forty, or near that age, in the little group, the appeal was evidently to him.  Lawrence Newt looked at the three girls, with the swimming light in his eyes, half crushing them and smiling, so that every one of them felt, each in her own way, that they were as completely blinded by that smile as by a glare of sunlight—­which also, like that smile, is warm, and not treacherous.