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.