Simcoe's shoulder, and her passion wept and sobbed itself away.
She did not understand what it was, nor why. A little while before, upon
the lawn, she had been so happy. Now it seemed as if her heart were
breaking. When she grew calmer, Mrs. Simcoe, holding the fair face
between her hands, and tenderly kissing it once more, said, slowly,
"Hope, my child, we must all walk the path alone. But you, too, will
learn that our human affections are but tents of a night."
"Aunty, Aunty, what do you mean?" asked Hope, who had risen as the other
was speaking, and now stood beside her, pale and proud.
"I mean, Hope, that you are in love with Abel Newt."
Hope's hands dropped by her side. She stepped back a little. A feeling of
inexpressible solitude fell upon her--of alienation from her grandfather,
and of an inexplicable separation from her old nurse--a feeling as if she
suddenly stood alone in the world--as if she had ceased to be a girl.
"Aunty, is it wrong to love him?"
Before Mrs. Simcoe could answer there was a knock at the door. It was
Hiram, who announced the victim of yesterday's battle, waiting in the
parlor to say a word to Miss Wayne.
"Yes, Hiram." He bowed and withdrew. Hope Wayne stood at the window
silent for a little while, then, with the calm, lofty air--calmer and
loftier than ever--she went down and found Gabriel Bennet. He had come to
thank her--to say how much better he was--how sorry that he should have
been so disgraced as to have been fighting almost before her very eyes.
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