As she saw the kindly face she smiled and shook her hand.  There was a motion of inquiry:  “Shall I come round?” And a very resolute telegraphing by the head back again:  “No, no!” There was another question, in the language of shoulders, and handkerchief, and hands:  “What on earth are you doing up there?” The answer was prompt and intelligible:  “Nothing that I am ashamed of.”  Still there came another message of motion from below, which Amy, knowing Lawrence Newt, unconsciously interpreted to herself thus:  “I know you, angel of mercy!  You have brought some angelic soup to some poor woman.”  The only reply was a smile that shone down from the window into the heart of the merchant who stood below.  The smile was followed by a wave of the hand from above that said farewell.  Lawrence Newt looked up and kissed his own, but the smiling face was gone.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE CAMPAIGN.

Miss Fanny Newt went to Saratoga with a perfectly clear idea of what she intended to do.  She intended to be engaged to Mr. Alfred Dinks.

That young gentleman was a second cousin of Hope Wayne’s, and his mother had never objected to his little visits at Pinewood, when both he and Hope were young, and when the unsophisticated human heart is flexible as melted wax, and receives impressions which only harden with time.

“Let the children play together, my dear,” she said, in conjugal seclusion to her husband, the Hon. Budlong Dinks, who needed only sufficient capacity and a proper opportunity to have been one of the most distinguished of American diplomatists.  He thought he was such already.  There was, indeed, plenty of diplomacy in the family, and that most skillful of all diplomatic talents, the management of distinguished diplomatists, was not unknown there.

Fanny Newt had made the proper inquiries.  The result was that there were rumors—­“How do such stories start?” asked Mrs. Budlong Dinks of all her friends who were likely to repeat the rumor—­that it was a family understanding that Mr. Alfred Dinks and his cousin Hope were to make a match.  “And they do say,” said Mrs. Dinks, “what ridiculous things people are! and they do say that, for family reasons, we are going to keep it all quiet!  What a world it is!”

The next day Mrs. Cod told Mrs. Dod, in a morning call, that Mrs. Budlong Dinks said that the engagement between her son Alfred and his cousin Hope Wayne was kept quiet for family reasons.  Before sunset of that day society was keeping it quiet with the utmost diligence.

These little stories were brought by little birds to New York, so that when Mrs. Dinks arrived the air was full of hints and suggestions, and the name of Hope Wayne was not unknown.  Farther acquaintance with Mr. Alfred Dinks had revealed to Miss Fanny that there was a certain wealthy ancestor still living, in whom the Dinkses had an interest, and that the only participant with them in that interest was Miss Hope Wayne.  That was enough for Miss Fanny, whose instinct at once assured her that Mrs. Dinks designed Hope Wayne for her son Alfred, in order that the fortune should be retained in the family.