It might be very sad not to be aware of it, thought Amy.  What a profound pity it would be if any young woman should not see it, for instance, in the case of Lawrence Newt.  But when a young woman is in no doubt at all, when she knows perfectly well that such a man is not intended by nature to be a marrying man, and therefore never thinks of such a thing, but only with a grace, and generosity, and delicacy beyond expression offers his general homage to the sex by giving little gifts to her, “why, then—­then,” thought Amy, and she was thinking so at the very moment when she sat with Gabriel and Ellen, talking in a half wild, lively, incoherent way, “why, then—­then,” and her eyes leaped across the room and fell, as it were, into the arms of Lawrence Newt’s, which caressed them with soft light, and half-laughed “You came again, did you?”—­“why, then—­then,” and Amy buried her face in the cool, damp roses, and did not dare to look again, “then she had better go and be a Sister of Charity.”

CHAPTER XXIX.

MR. ABEL NEWT, GRAND STREET.

As the world returned to town and the late autumnal festivities began, the handsome person and self-possessed style of Mr. Abel Newt became the fashion.  Invitations showered upon him.  Mrs. Dagon proclaimed every where that there had been nobody so fascinating since the days of the brilliant youth of Aaron Burr, whom she declared that she well remembered, and added, that if she could say it without blushing, or if any reputable woman ought to admit such things, she should confess that in her younger days she had received flowers and even notes from that fascinating man.

“I don’t deny, my dears, that he was a naughty man.  But I can tell you one thing, all the naughty men are not in disgrace yet, though he is.  And, if you please, Miss Fanny, with all your virtuous sniffs, dear, and all your hugging of men in waltzing, darling, Colonel Burr was not sent to Coventry because he was naughty.  He might have been naughty all the days of his life, and Mrs. Jacob Van Boozenberg and the rest of ’em would have been quite as glad to have him at their houses.  No, no, dears, society doesn’t punish men for being naughty—­only women.  I am older than you, and I have observed that society likes spice in character.  It doesn’t harm a man to have stories told about him.”

No ball was complete without Abel Newt.  Ladies, meditating parties, engaged him before they issued a single invitation.  At dinners he was sparkling and agreeable, with tact enough not to extinguish the other men, who yet felt his superiority and did not half like it.  They imitated his manner; but what was ease or gilded assurance in him was open insolence, or assurance with the gilt rubbed off, in them.  The charm and secret of his manner lay in an utter devotion, which said to every woman, “There’s not a woman in the world who can resist me, except you.  Have you the heart to do it?” Of course this manner was assisted by personal magnetism and beauty.  Wilkes said he was only half an hour behind the handsomest man in the world.  But he would never have overtaken him if the handsome man had been Wilkes.