CHAPTER LXIII.
ENDYMION.
Lawrence Newt had told Aunt Martha that he preferred to hear from a young woman's own lips that she loved him.

Was he suspicious of the truth of Aunt Martha's assertion?
When the Burt will was read, and Fanny Dinks had hissed her envy and chagrin, she had done more than she would willingly have done: she had said that all the world knew he was in love with Hope Wayne.

If all the world knew it, then surely Amy Waring did; "and if she did, was it so strange," he thought, "that she should have said what she did to me ?" He thought often of these things.

But one of the days when he sat in his office, and the junior partner was engaged in writing the letters which formerly Lawrence wrote, the question slid into his mind as brightly, but as softly and benignantly, as daylight into the sky.
"Does it follow that she does not love me?
If she did love me, but thought that I loved Hope Wayne, would she not hide it from me in every way--not only to save her own pride, but in order not to give me pain ?" So secret and reticent was he, that as he thought this he was nervously anxious lest the junior partner should happen to look up and read it all in his eyes.
Lawrence Newt rose and stood at the window, with his back to Gabriel, for his thoughts grew many and strange.
As he came down that morning he had stopped at Hope Wayne's, and they had talked for a long time.

Gabriel had told his partner of his visit to Mrs.
Fanny Dinks, and Lawrence had mentioned it to Hope Wayne.