_ CHAPTER X. BEGINNING TO SKETCH
The next morning when Gabriel declared that he was perfectly well and had better return, nobody opposed his departure. Hope Wayne, indeed, ordered the carriage so readily that the poor boy's heart sank. Yet Hope pitied Gabriel sincerely. She wished he had not been injured, because then there would have been nobody guilty of injuring him; and she was quite willing he should go, because his presence reminded her too forcibly of what she wanted to forget.
The poor boy drove dismally away, thinking what a dreadful thing it is to be young.
After he had gone Hope Wayne sat upon the lawn reading. Suddenly a shadow fell across the page, and looking up she saw Abel Newt standing beside her. He had his cap in one hand and a port-folio in the other. The blood rushed from Hope's cheek to her heart; then rushed back again. Abel saw it.
Rising from the lawn and bowing gravely, she turned toward the house.
"Miss Wayne," said Abel, in a voice which was very musical and very low--she stopped--"I hope you have not already convicted and sentenced me."
He smiled a little as he spoke, not familiarly, not presumptuously, but with an air which indicated his entire ability to justify himself. Hope said:
"I have no wish to be unjust."
"May I then plead my own cause?"
"I must go into the house--I will call my grandfather, whom I suppose you wish to see."
"I am here by his permission, and I hope you will not regard me as an intruder."
"Certainly not, if he knows you are here;" and Hope lingered to hear if he had any thing more to say.
"It was a very sudden affair. We were both hot and angry; but he is smaller than I, and I should have done nothing had he not struck me, and fallen upon me so that I was obliged to defend myself."
"Yes--to be sure--in that case," said Hope, still lingering, and remarking the music of his voice. Abel continued--while the girl's eyes saw how well he looked upon that lawn--the clustering black hair--the rich eyes--the dark complexion--the light of intelligence playing upon his face--his dress careful but graceful--and the port-folio which showed this interview to be no design or expectation, but a mere chance--
"I am very sorry you should have had the pain of seeing such a spectacle, and I am ashamed my first introduction to you should have been at such a time."
Hope Wayne lingered, looking on the ground.
"I think, indeed," continued Abel, "that you owe me an opportunity of making a better impression."
"Hope! Hope!" came floating the sound of a distant voice calling in the garden.
Hope Wayne turned her head toward the voice, but her eyes looked upon the ground, and her feet still lingered.
"I have known you so long, and yet have never spoken to you," said the musical voice at her side; "I have seen you so constantly in church, and I have even tried sometimes--I confess it--to catch a glance from you as you came out. But I am not sorry, for now--"
"Hope! Hope!" called the voice from the garden.
Hope looked dreamily in that direction, not as if she heard it, but as if she were listening to something in her mind.
"Now I meet you here on this lovely lawn in your own beautiful home. Do you know that your grandfather permits me to sketch the place?"
"Do you draw, Mr. Newt?" asked Hope Wayne, in a tone which seemed to Abel to trickle along his nerves, so exquisite and prolonged was the pleasure it gave him to hear her call him by name. How did she know it? thought he.
"Yes, I draw, and am very fond of it," he answered, as he untied his port-folio. "I do not dare to say that I am proud of my drawing--and yet you may perhaps recognize this, if you will look a moment."
"Hope! Hope!" came the voice again from the garden. Abel heard it--perhaps Hope did not. He was busily opening his port-folio and turning over the drawings, and stepped closer to her, as he said:
"There! now, what is that?" and he handed her a sketch.
Hope looked at it and smiled.
"That is the farther shore of the pond with the spire; how very pretty it is!"
"And this?"
"Oh! that is the old church, and there is Mr. Gray's face at the window. How good they are! You draw very well, Mr. Newt."
"Do you draw, Miss Wayne?"
"I've had plenty of lessons," replied Hope, smiling; "but I can't draw from nature very well."
"What do you sketch, then?"
"Well, scenes and figures out of books."
"How very pleasant that must be! That's a better style than mine."
"Why so?"
"Because we can never draw any thing as handsome as it seems to us. You can go and see the pond with your own eyes, and then no picture will seem worth having." He paused. "There is another reason, too, I suppose."
"What is that?" asked Hope, looking at her companion.
"Well," he answered, smiling, "because life in books is always so much better than real life!"
"Is it so?" said Hope, musingly.
"Yes, certainly. People are always brave, and beautiful, and good, in books. An author may make them do and say just what he and all the world want them to, and it all seems right. And then they do such splendidly impossible things!"
"How do they?"
"Why, now, if you and I were in a book at this moment, instead of standing on this lawn, I might be a knight slaying a great dragon that was just coming to destroy you, and you--"
"Hope, Hope!" rang the voice from the garden, nearer and more imperiously.
"And I--might be saved by another knight dashing in upon you, like that voice upon your sentence," said Hope, smiling.
"No, no," answered Abel, laughing, "that shouldn't be in the book. I should slay the great dragon who would desolate all Delafield with the swishing of his scaly tail; then you would place a wreath upon my head, and all the people would come out and salute me for saving the Princess whom they loved, and I"--said Abel, after a momentary pause, a shade more gravely, and in a tone a little lower--"and I, as I rode away, should not wonder that they loved her."
He looked across the lawn under the pine-trees as if he were thinking of some story that he had been actually reading. Hope smiled no longer, but said, quietly,
"Mr. Newt, I am wanted. I must go in. Good-morning!" And she moved away.
"Perhaps your cousin Alfred Dinks has arrived," said Abel, carelessly, as he closed his port-folio.
Hope Wayne stopped, and, standing very erect, turned and looked at him.
"Do you know my cousin, Mr. Dinks?"
"Not at all."
"How did you know that I had such a cousin?"
"I heard it somewhere," answered Abel, gently and respectfully, but looking at Hope with a curious glance which seemed to her to penetrate every pore in her body. That glance said as plainly as words could have said, "And I heard you were engaged to him."
Hope Wayne looked serious for a moment; then she said, with a half smile,
"I suppose it is no secret that Alfred Dinks is my cousin;" and, bowing to Abel, she went swiftly over the lawn toward the house. _