"But I have called with an invitation from my sister, Mrs.Boniface Newt, for this evening to a small party.

She incloses her card, and begs you to waive the formality of a call." That was the way that Lawrence Newt and Hope Wayne came to be sitting on the cane sofa under the great orange-tree in Boniface Newt's conservatory.
They had entered the room and made their bows to Mrs.Nancy; and Mr.
Lawrence, wishing to talk to Miss Hope, had led her by another way to the conservatory, and so Mr.Abel had failed to see them.
As they sat under the tree Lawrence Newt conversed with Hope in a tone of earnest and respectful tenderness that touched her heart.

She could not understand the winning kindliness of his manner, nor could she resist it.
He spoke of her home with an accuracy of detail that surprised her.
"It was not the same house in my day, and you, perhaps, hardly remember much of the old one.

The house is changed, but nothing else; no, nothing else," he added, musingly, and with the same dreamy expression in his eyes that was in them when he leaned against his office window and watched the ships--while his mind sailed swifter and farther than they.
"They can not touch the waving outline of the hills that you see from the lawn, nor the pine-trees that shade the windows.

Does the little brook still flow in the meadow below?
And do you understand the pine-trees?
Do they tell any tales ?" He asked it with a half-mournful gayety.