“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.

CHAPTER XI.

A VERDICT AND A SENTENCE.

Hope Wayne did not agree with Abel Newt that life was so much better in books.  There was nothing better in any book she had ever read than the little conversation with the handsome youth which she had had that morning upon the lawn.  When she went into the house she found no one until she knocked at Mrs. Simcoe’s door.

“Aunty, did you call me?”

“Yes, Hope.”

“I was on the lawn, Aunty.”

“I know it, Hope.”

The young lady did not ask her why she had not sought her there, but she asked, “What do you want, Aunty?”

The older woman looked quietly out of the window.  Neither spoke for a long time.

“I saw you talking with Abel Newt on the lawn.  Why did he strike that boy?” asked Mrs. Simcoe at length, still gazing at the distant hills.

“He had to defend himself,” said Hope, rapidly.

“Couldn’t a young man protect himself against a boy without stunning him?  He might easily have killed him,” said Mrs. Simcoe, in the same dry tone.