And yet she was always seeking the distraction of other people.

Puff—­puff—­puff.

Then there was something that made the society of her own thoughts unpleasant—­almost intolerable.

Mr. Arthur Merlin vigorously rubbed out with a piece of stale bread a false line he had drawn.

What is that something—­or some-bod-y?

He stopped sketching, and puffed for a long time.

As he returned at sunset Hope Wayne was standing upon the piazza of the hotel.

“Have you been successful?” asked she, dawning upon him.

“You shall judge.”

He showed her his sketch of a tree-stump.

“Good; but a little careless,” she said.

“Do you draw, Miss Wayne?”

A curious light glimmered across her face, for she remembered where she had last heard those words.  She shrank a little, almost imperceptibly, as if her eyes had been suddenly dazzled.  Then a little more distantly—­not much more, but Arthur had remarked every thing—­she said: 

“Yes, I draw a little.  Good-evening.”

“Stop, please, Miss Wayne!” exclaimed Arthur, as he saw that she was going.  She turned and smiled—­a smile that seemed to him like starlight, it was so clear and cool and dim.

“I have drawn this for you, Miss Wayne.”

She bent and took the sketch which he drew from his port-folio.

“It is Manfred in the Coliseum,” said he.

She glanced at it; but the smile faded entirely.  Arthur stared at her in astonishment as the blood slowly ebbed from her cheeks, then streamed back again.  The head of Manfred was the head of Abel Newt.  Hope Wayne looked from the sketch to the artist, searching him with her eye to discover if he knew what he was doing.  Arthur was sincerely unconscious.

Hope Wayne dropped the paper almost involuntarily.  It floated into the road.

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Merlin,” said she, making a step to recover it.

He was before her, and handed it to her again.

“Thank you,” said she, quietly, and went in.

It was still twilight, and Arthur lighted a cigar and sat down to a meditation.  The result of it was clear enough.

“That head looks like somebody, and that somebody is Hope Wayne’s secret.”  Puff—­puff—­puff.

“Where did I get that head?” He could not remember.  “Tut!” cried he, suddenly bringing his chair down upon its legs with a force that knocked his cigar out of his mouth, “I copied it from a head which Jim Greenidge has, and which he says was one of his school-fellows.”

Meanwhile Hope Wayne had carefully locked the door of her room.  Then she hurriedly tore the sketch into the smallest possible pieces, laid them in her hand, opened the window, and whiffed them away into the dark.

CHAPTER XXIII.

BONIFACE NEWT, SON, AND CO., DRY GOODS ON COMMISSION.