Abel read the letters, and stood looking at the floor, musingly. His
school days, then, were numbered; the stage was to be deepened and
widened--the scenery and the figures so wonderfully changed! He was to
step in a moment from school into the world. He was to lie down one night
a boy, and wake up a man the next morning.

The cloud of thoughts and fancies that filled his mind all drifted toward
one point--all floated below a summit upon which stood the only thing he
could discern clearly, and that was the figure of Hope Wayne. Just as he
thought he could reach her, was he to be torn away?

And who was Mr. Alfred Dinks?




CHAPTER X.

BEGINNING TO SKETCH.


The next morning when Gabriel declared that he was perfectly well and had
better return, nobody opposed his departure. Hope Wayne, indeed, ordered
the carriage so readily that the poor boy's heart sank. Yet Hope pitied
Gabriel sincerely. She wished he had not been injured, because then there
would have been nobody guilty of injuring him; and she was quite willing
he should go, because his presence reminded her too forcibly of what she
wanted to forget.