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.
And yet she was always seeking the distraction of other people.
Puff--puff--puff.
Then there was something that made the society of her own thoughts unpleasant--almost intolerable.
Mr.Arthur Merlin vigorously rubbed out with a piece of stale bread a false line he had drawn.
What is that something--or some-bod-y?
He stopped sketching, and puffed for a long time.
As he returned at sunset Hope Wayne was standing upon the piazza of the hotel.
"Have you been successful ?" asked she, dawning upon him.
"You shall judge." He showed her his sketch of a tree-stump.
"Good; but a little careless," she said.
"Do you draw, Miss Wayne ?" A curious light glimmered across her face, for she remembered where she had last heard those words.