But Arthur Merlin, the painter, who had come to pass a few days at Saratoga on his way to Lake George, and whose few days had expanded into the few weeks that Miss Wayne had been there—­Arthur Merlin, the painter, whose eyes were accustomed not only to look, but to see, observed that Miss Wayne was constantly doing something.  It was dance, drive, bowl, ride, walk incessantly.  From the earliest hour to the latest she was in the midst of people and excitement.  She gave herself scarcely time to sleep.

The painter was introduced to her, and became one of her habitual attendants.  Every morning after breakfast Hope Wayne held a kind of court upon the piazza.  All the young men surrounded her and worshipped.

Arthur Merlin was intelligent and ingenuous.  His imagination gave a kind of airy grace to his conversation and manner.  Passionately interested in his art, he deserted its pursuit a little only when the observation of life around him seemed to him a study as interesting.  He and Miss Wayne were sometimes alone together; but although she was conscious of a peculiar sympathy with his tastes and character, she avoided him more than any of the other young men.  Mrs. Dagon said it was a pity Miss Wayne was so cold and haughty to the poor painter.  She thought that people might be taught their places without cruelty.

Arthur Merlin constantly said to himself in a friendly way that if he had been less in love with his art, or had not perceived that Miss Wayne had a continual reserved thought, he might have fallen in love with her.  As it was, he liked her so much that he cared for the society of no other lady.  He read Byron with her sometimes when they went in little parties to the lake, and somehow he and Hope found themselves alone under the trees in a secluded spot, and the book open in his hand.

He also read to her one day a poem upon a cloud, so beautiful that Hope Wayne’s cheek flushed, and she asked, eagerly,

“Whose is that?”

“It is one of Shelley’s, a friend of Byron’s.”

“But how different!”

“Yes, they were different men.  Listen to this.”

And the young man read the ode to a Sky-lark.

“How joyous it is!” said Hope; “but I feel the sadness.”

“Yes, I often feel that in people as well as in poems,” replied Arthur, looking at her closely.

She colored a little—­said that it was warm—­and rose to go.

The cold black eyes of Miss Fanny Newt suddenly glittered upon them.

“Will you go home with us, Miss Wayne?”

“Thank you, I am just coming;” and Hope passed into the wood.

When Arthur Merlin was left alone he quietly lighted a cigar, opened his port-folio and spread it before him, then sharpened a pencil and began to sketch.  But while he looked at the tree before him, and mechanically transferred it to the paper, he puffed and meditated.

He saw that Hope Wayne was constantly with other people, and yet he felt that she was a woman who would naturally like her own society.  He also saw that there was no person then at Saratoga in whom she had such an interest that she would prefer him to her own society.