Chapter XLII…

Chapter XLII

How well appaid she was her bird to find.

Sidney.

Fleda counted the minutes till it wanted an hour of sundown; and then avoiding Mrs. Pritchard made her escape out of the house. A long walk was before her and the latter part of it through a region which she wished to pass while the light was good. And she was utterly unable to travel at any but a very gentle rate. So she gave herself plenty of time.

It was a very bright afternoon and all the world was astir. Fleda shielded herself with a thick veil and went up one of the narrow streets, not daring to venture into Broadway; and passing Waverly Place which was almost as bright, turned down Eighth-street. A few blocks now and she would be out of all danger of meeting any one that knew her. She drew her veil close and hurried on. But the proverb saith "a miss is as good as a mile," and with reason; for if fate wills the chances make nothing. As Fleda set her foot down to cross Fifth Avenue she saw Mr. Carleton on the other side coming up from Waverly Place. She went as slowly as she dared, hoping that he would pass without looking her way, or be unable to recognize her through her thick wrapper. In vain,--she soon saw that she was known; he was waiting for her, and she must put up her veil and speak to him.

"Why I thought you had left New York," said he;--"I was told so."

"I had left it--I have left it, sir," said Fleda;--"I have only come back for a day or two--"

"Have you been ill?" he said with a sudden change of tone, the light in his eye and smile giving place to a very marked gravity.

Fleda would have answered with a half smile, but such a sickness of heart came over her that speech failed and she was very near bursting into tears. Mr. Carleton looked at her earnestly a moment, and then put the hand which Fleda had forgotten he still held, upon his arm and began to walk forward gently with her. Something in the grave tenderness with which this was done reminded Fleda irresistibly of the times when she had been a child under his care; and somehow her thoughts went off on a tangent back to the further days of her mother and father and grandfather, the other friends from whom she had had the same gentle protection, which now there was no one in the world to give her. And their images did never seem more winning fair than just then,--when their place was left most especially empty. Her uncle she had never looked up to in the same way, and whatever stay he had been was cut down. Her aunt leaned upon her; and Hugh had always been more of a younger than an elder brother. The quick contrast of those old happy childish days was too strong; the glance back at what she had had, made her feel the want. Fleda blamed herself, reasoned and fought with herself;--but she was weak in mind and body, her nerves were unsteady yet, her spirits unprepared for any encounter or reminder of pleasure; and though vexed and ashamed she could not hold her head up, and she could not prevent tear after tear from falling as they went along; she could only hope that nobody saw them.

Nobody spoke of them. But then nobody said anything; and the silence at last frightened her into rousing herself She checked her tears and raised her head; she ventured no more; she dared not turn her face towards her companion. He looked at her once or twice, as if in doubt whether to speak or not.

"Are you not going beyond your strength?" he said at length gently.

Fleda said no, although in a tone that half confessed his suspicion. He was silent again, however, and she cast about in vain for something to speak of; it seemed to her that all subjects of conversation in general had been packed up for exportation, neither eye nor memory could light upon a single one. Block after block was passed, the pace at which he walked, and the manner of his care for her, alone shewing that he knew what a very light hand was resting upon his arm.

"How pretty the curl of blue smoke is from that chimney," he said.

It was said with a tone so carelessly easy that Fleda's heart jumped for one instant in the persuasion that he had seen and noticed nothing peculiar about her.

"I know it," she said eagerly,--"I have often thought of it--especially here in the city--"

"Why is it? what is it?--"

Fleda's eye gave one of its exploratory looks at his, such as he remembered from years ago, before she spoke.

"Isn't it contrast?--or at least I think that helps the effect here."

"What do you make the contrast?" he said quietly.

"Isn't it," said Fleda with another glance, "the contrast of something pure and free and upward-tending, with what is below it. I did not mean the mere painter's contrast. In the country smoke is more picturesque, but in the city I think it has more character."

"To how many people do you suppose it ever occurred that smoke had a character?" said he smiling.

"You are laughing at me, Mr. Carleton? perhaps I deserve it."

"You do not think that," said he with a look that forbade her to think it. "But I see you are of Lavater's mind, that everything has a physiognomy?"

"I think he was perfectly right," said Fleda. "Don't you, Mr. Carleton?"

"To some people, yes!--But the expression is so subtle that only very nice sensibilities, with fine training, can hope to catch it; therefore to the mass of the world Lavater would talk nonsense."

"That is a gentle hint to me. But if I talk nonsense I wish you would set me right, Mr. Carleton;--I am very apt to amuse myself with tracing out fancied analogies in almost everything, and I may carry it too far--too far--to be spoken of wisely. I think it enlarges one's field of pleasure very much. Where one eye is stopped, another is but invited on."

"So," said Mr. Carleton, "while that puff of smoke would lead one person's imagination only down the chimney to the kitchen fire, it would take another's----where did yours go?" said he suddenly turning round upon her.

Fleda met his eye again, without speaking; but her look had perhaps more than half revealed her thought, for she was answered with a smile so intelligent and sympathetic that she was abashed.

"How very much religion heightens the enjoyments of life," Mr. Carleton said after a while.

Fieda's heart throbbed an answer; she did not speak.

"Both in its direct and indirect action. The mind is set free from influences that narrowed its range and dimmed its vision; and refined to a keener sensibility, a juster perception, a higher power of appreciation, by far, than it had before. And then, to say nothing of religion's own peculiar sphere of enjoyment, technically religious,--what a field of pleasure it opens to its possessor in the world of moral beauty, most partially known to any other,--and the fine but exquisite analogies of things material with things spiritual,--those harmonies of Nature, to which, talk as they will, all other ears are deaf!"

"You know," said Fleda with full eyes that she dared not shew, "how Henry Martyn said that he found he enjoyed painting and music so much more after he became a Christian."

"I remember. It is the substituting a just medium for a false one--it is putting nature within and nature without in tune with each other, so that the chords are perfect now which were jarring before."

"And yet how far people would be from believing you, Mr. Carleton."

"Yes--they are possessed with the contrary notion. But in all the creation nothing has a one-sided usefulness;--what a reflection it would be upon the wisdom of its author if godliness alone were the exception--if it were not 'profitable for the life that now is, as well as for that which is to come'!"

"They make that work the other way, don't they?" said Fleda.--"Not being able to see how thorough religion should be for anybody's happiness, they make use of your argument to conclude that it is not what the Bible requires. How I have heard that urged--that God intended his creatures to be happy--as a reason why they should disobey him. They lay hold on the wrong end of the argument and work backwards."

"Precisely.

"'God intended his creatures to be happy.

"'Strict obedience would make them unhappy.

"'Therefore, he does not intend them to obey.'"

"They never put it before them quite so clearly," said Fleda.

"They would startle at it a little. But so they would at the right stating of the case."

"And how would that be, Mr. Carleton?"

"It might be somewhat after this fashion--

"'God requires nothing that is not for the happiness of his people--

"'He requires perfect obedience--

"'Therefore perfect obedience is for their happiness'

"But unbelief will not understand that. Did it ever strike you how much there is in those words 'Come and see'?--All that argument can do, after all, is but to persuade to that. Only faith will submit to terms and enter the narrrow gate; and only obedience knows what the prospect is on the other side."

"But isn't it true, Mr. Carleton, that the world have some cause for their opinion?--judging as they do by the outside? The peculiar pleasures of religion, as you say, are out of sight, and they do not always find in religious people that enlargement and refinement of which you were speaking."

"Because they make unequal comparisons. Recollect that, as God has declared, the ranks of religion are not for the most part filled from the wise and the great. In making your estimate you must measure things equal in other respects. Compare the same man with himself before he was a Christian or with his unchristianized fellows--and you will find invariably the refining, dignifying, ennobling, influence of true religion; the enlarged intelligence and the greater power of enjoyment."

"And besides those causes of pleasure-giving that you mentioned," said Fleda,--"there is a mind at ease; and how much that is alone. If I may judge others by myself,--the mere fact of being unpoised--unresting-- disables the mind from a thousand things that are joyfully relished by one entirely at ease."

"Yes," said he,--"do you remember that word--'The stones of the field shall be at peace with thee'?"

"I am afraid people would understand you as little as they would me, Mr. Carleton," said Fleda laughing.

He smiled, rather a prolonged smile, the expression of which Fleda could not make out; she felt that she did not quite understand him.

"I have thought," said he after a pause, "that much of the beauty we find in many things is owing to a hidden analogy--the harmony they make with some unknown string of the mind's harp which they have set a vibrating. But the music of that is so low and soft that one must listen very closely to find out what it is."

"Why that is the very theory of which I gave you a smoky illustration a little while ago," said Fleda. "I thought I was on safe ground, after what you said about the characters of flowers, for that was a little--"

"Fanciful?" said he smiling.

"What you please," said Fleda colouring a little,--"I am sure it is true. The theory, I mean. I have many a time felt it, though I never put it in words. I shall think of that."

"Did you ever happen to see the very early dawn of a winter's morning?" said he.

But he laughed the next instant at the comical expression of Fleda's face as it was turned to him.

"Forgive me for supposing you as ignorant as myself. I have seen it--once."

"Appreciated it, I hope, that time?" said Fleda.

"I shall never forget it."

"And it never wrought in you a desire to see it again?"

"I might see many a dawn," said he smiling, "without what I saw then. It was very early--and a cloudy morning, so that night had still almost undisturbed possession of earth and sky; but in the south-eastern quarter, between two clouds, there was a space of fair white promise, hardly making any impression upon the darkness but only set off by it. And upon this one bright spot in earth or heaven, rode the planet of the morning--the sun's forerunner--bright upon the brightness. All else was dusky--except where overhead the clouds had parted again and shewed a faint old moon, glimmering down upon the night it could no longer be said to 'rule'."

"Beautiful!" said Fleda. "There is hardly any time I like so well as the dawn of a winter morning with an old moon in the sky. Summer weather has no beauty like it--in some things."

"Once," continued Mr, Carleton, "I should have seen no more than I have told you--the beauty that every cultivated eye must take in. But now, methought I saw the dayspring that has come upon a longer night--and from out of the midst of it there was the fair face of the morning star looking at me with its sweet reminder and invitation--looking over the world with its aspect of triumphant expectancy;--there was its calm assurance of the coming day,--its promise that the star of hope which now there were only a few watching eyes to see, should presently be followed by the full beams of the Sun of righteousness making the kingdoms of the world his own.--Your memory may bring to you the words that came to mine,--the promise 'to him that overcometh', and the beauty of the lips that made it--the encouragement to 'patient continuance in well-doing', 'till the day break and the shadows flee away.'--And there on the other hand was the substituted light of earth's wisdom and inventions, dominant yet, but waning and soon to be put out for ever."

Fleda was crying again, and perhaps that was the reason why Mr. Carleton was silent for some time. She was very sorry to shew herself so weak, but she could not help it; part of his words had come too close. And when she had recovered again she was absolutely silent too, for they were nearing Sloman-street and she could not take him there with her. She did not know what to say, nor what he would think; and she said not another word till they came to the corner. There she must stop and speak.

"I am very much obliged to you, Mr. Carleton," she said drawing her hand from his arm, "for taking care of me all this disagreeable way--I will not give you any more trouble."

"You are not going to dismiss me?" said he looking at her with a countenance of serious anxiety.

"I must," said Fleda ingenuously,--"I have business to attend to here--"

"But you will let me have the pleasure of waiting for you?"

"O no," said Fleda hesitating and flushing,--"thank you, Mr. Carleton,--but pray do not--I don't know at all how long I may be detained."

He bowed, she thought gravely, and turned away, and she entered the little wretched street; with a strange feeling of pain that she could not analyze. She did not know where it came from, but she thought if there only had been a hiding-place for her she could have sat down and wept a whole heartful. The feeling must be kept back now, and it was soon forgotten in the throbbing of her heart at another thought which took entire possession.

The sun was not down, there was time enough, but it was with a step and eye of hurried anxiety that Fleda passed along the little street, for fear of missing her quest or lest Dinah should have changed her domicil. Yet would her uncle have named it for their meeting if he had not been sure of it? It was very odd he should have appointed that place at all, and Fleda was inclined to think he must have seen Dinah by some chance, or it never would have come into his head. Still her eye passed unheeding over all the varieties of dinginess and misery in her way, intent only upon finding that particular dingy cellar-way which used to admit her to Dinah's premises. It was found at last, and she went in.

The old woman, herself most unchanged, did not know the young lady, but well remembered the little girl whom Fleda brought to her mind. And then she was overjoyed to see her, and asked a multitude of questions, and told a long story of her having met Mr. Rossitur in the street the other day "in the last place where she'd have looked to see him;" and how old he had grown, and how surprised she had been to see the grey hairs in his head. Fleda at last gave her to understand that she expected him to meet her there and would like to see him alone; and the good woman immediately took her work into another apartment, made up the fire and set up the chairs, and leaving her assured Fleda she would lock up the doors "and not let no one come through."

It was sundown, and later, Fleda thought, and she felt as if every pulse was doing double duty. No matter--if she were shattered and the work done. But what work!--Oh the needlessness, the cruelty, the folly of it! And how much of the ill consequences she might be unable after all to ward off. She took off her hat, to relieve a nervous smothered feeling; and walked, and sat down; and then sat still, from trembling inability to do anything else. Dinah's poor little room, clean though it was, looked to her the most dismal place in the world from its association with her errand; she hid her face on her knees that she might have no disagreeableness to contend with but that which could not be shut out.

It had lain there some time, till a sudden felling of terror at the growing lateness made her raise it to look at the window. Mr. Rossitur was standing still before her, he must have come in very softly,--and looking,--oh Fleda had not imagined him looking so changed. All was forgotten,--the wrong, and the needlessness, and the indignation with which she had sometimes thought of it; Fleda remembered nothing but love and pity, and threw herself upon his neck with such tears of tenderness and sympathy, such kisses of forgiveness and comfort-speaking, as might have broken a stouter heart than Mr. Rossitur's. He held her in his arms for a few minutes, passively suffering her caresses, and then gently unloosing her hold placed her on a seat; sat down a little way off, covered his face and groaned aloud.

Fleda could not recover herself at once. Then shaking off her agitation she came and knelt down by his side and putting one arm over his shoulder laid her cheek against his forehead. Words were beyond reach, but his forehead was wet with her tears; and kisses, of soft entreaty, of winning assurance, said all she could say.

"What did you come here for, Fleda?" said Mr. Rossitur at length, without changing his position.

"To bring you home, uncle Rolf."

"Home!" said he, with an accent between bitterness and despair.

"Yes, for it's all over, it's all forgotten--there is no more to be said about it at all," said Fleda, getting her words out she didn't know how.

"What is forgotten?" said he harshly.

"All that you would wish, sir," replied Fleda softly and gently;--"there is no more to be done about it; and I came to tell you if possible before it was too late. Oh I'm so glad!--" and her arms and her cheek pressed closer as fresh tears stopped her voice.

"How do you know, Fleda?" said Mr. Rossitur raising his head and bringing hers to his shoulder, while his arms in turn enclosed her.

Fleda whispered, "He told me so himself."

"Who?"

"Mr. Thorn."

The words were but just spoken above her breath. Mr. Rossitur was silent for some time.

"Are you sure you understood him?"

"Yes, sir; it could not have been spoken plainer."

"Are you quite sure he meant what he said, Fleda?"

"Perfectly sure, uncle Rolf! I know he did."

"What stipulation did he make beforehand?"

"He did it without any stipulation, sir."

"What was his inducement then? If I know him he is not a man to act without any."

Fleda's cheek was dyed, but except that she gave no other answer.

"Why has it been left so long?" said her uncle presently.

"I don't know, sir--he said nothing about that. He promised that neither we nor the world should hear anything more of it."

"The world?" said Mr. Rossitur.

"No sir, he said that only one or two persons had any notion of it and that their secrecy he had the means of securing."

"Did he tell you anything more?"

"Only that he had the matter entirely under his control and that never a whisper of it should be heard again, No promise could be given more fully and absolutely."

Mr. Rossitur drew a long breath, speaking to Fleda's ear very great relief, and was silent.

"And what reward is he to have for this, Fleda?" he said after some musing.

"All that my hearty thanks and gratitude can give, as far as I am concerned, sir."

"Is that what he expects, Fleda?"

"I cannot help what he expects," said Fleda, in some distress.

"What have you engaged yourself to, my child?"

"Nothing in the world, uncle Rolf!" said Fleda earnestly--"nothing in the world. I haven't engaged myself to anything. The promise was made freely, without any sort of stipulation."

Mr. Rossitur looked thoughtful and disquieted. Fleda's tears were pouring again.

"I will not trust him," he said,--"I will not stay in the country!"

"But you will come home, uncle?" said Fleda, terrified.

"Yes my dear child--yes my dear child!" he said tenderly, putting his arms round Fleda again and kissing, with an earnestness of acknowledgment that went to her heart, her lips and brow,--"you shall do what you will with me; and when I go, we will all go together."

From Queechy! From America!--But she had no time for that thought now.

"You said 'for Hugh's sake,'" Mr. Rossitur observed after a pause, and with some apparent difficulty;--"what of him?"

"He is not well, uncle Rolf," said Fleda,--"and I think the best medicine will be the sight of you again."

Mr. Rossitur looked pale and was silent a moment.

"And my wife?" he said.

His face, and the thought of those faces at home, were too much for Fleda; she could not help it; "Oh, uncle Rolf," she said, hiding her face, "they only want to see you again now!"

Mr. Rossitur leaned his head in his hands and groaned; and Fleda could but cry; she felt there was nothing to say.

"It was for Marion," he said at length;--"it was when I was hard pressed and I was fearful if it were known that it might ruin her prospects.--I wanted that miserable sum--only four thousand dollars--that fellow Schwiden asked to borrow it of me for a few days, and to refuse would have been to confess all. I dared not try my credit, and I just madly took that step that proved irretrievable--I counted at the moment upon funds that were coming to me only the next week, sure, I thought, as possible,--but the man cheated me, and our embarrassments thickened from that time; that thing has been a weight--oh a weight of deadening power!--round my neck ever since. I have died a living death these six years!--"

"I know it, dear uncle--I know it all!" said Fleda, bringing the sympathizing touch of her cheek to his again.

"The good that it did has been unspeakably overbalanced by the evil--even long ago I knew that."

"The good that it did"! It was no time then to moralize, but he must know that Marion was at home, or he might incautiously reveal to her what happily there was no necessity for her ever knowing. And the story must give him great and fresh pain----

"Dear uncle Rolf!" said Fleda pressing closer to him, "we may be happier than we have been in a long time, if you will only take it so. The cloud upon you has been a cloud upon us."

"I know it!" he exclaimed,--"a cloud that served to shew me that my jewels were diamonds!"

"You have an accession to your jewels, uncle Rolf."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean," said Fleda trembling, "that there are two more at home."

He held her back to look at her.

"Can't you guess who?"

"No!" said he. "What do you mean?"

"I must tell you, because they know nothing, and needn't know, of all this matter."

"What are you talking about?"

"Marion is there----"

"Marion!" exclaimed Mr. Rossitur, with quick changes of expression,--" Marion!--At Queechy!--and her husband?"

"No sir,--a dear little child."

"Marion!--and her husband--where is he?"

Fleda hesitated.

"I don't know--I don't know whether she knows--"

"Is he dead?"

"No sir--"

Mr. Rossitur put her away and got up and walked, or strode, up and down, up and down, the little apartment. Fleda dared not look at him, even by the faint glimmer that came from the chimney.

But abroad it was perfectly dark--the stars were shining, the only lamps that illumined the poor little street, and for a long time there had been no light in the room but that of the tiny wood fire. Dinah never could be persuaded of the superior cheapness of coal. Fleda came at last to her uncle's side and putting her arm within his said,

"How soon will you set off for home, uncle Rolf?"

"To-morrow morning."

"You must take the boat to Bridgeport now--you know the river is fast."

"Yes I know----"

"Then I will meet you at the wharf, uncle Rolf,--at what o'clock?"

"My dear child," said he, stopping and passing his hand tenderly over her cheek, "are you fit for it to-morrow? You had better stay where you are quietly for a few days--you want rest."

"No, I will go home with you," said Fleda, "and rest there. But hadn't we better let Dinah in and bid her good bye? for I ought to be somewhere else to get ready."

Dinah was called, and a few kind words spoken, and with a more substantial remembrance, or reward, from Fleda's hand, they left her.

Fleda had the support of her uncle's arm till they came within sight of the house, and then he stood and watched her while she went the rest of the way alone.

Anything more white and spirit-looking, and more spirit-like in its purity and peacefulness, surely did not walk that night. There was music in her ear, and abroad in the star-light, more ethereal than Ariel's, but she knew where it came from; it was the chimes of her heart that were ringing; and never a happier peal, nor never had the mental atmosphere been more clear for their sounding. Thankfulness,--that was the oftenest note,--swelling thankfulness for her success,--joy for herself and for the dear ones at home,--generous delight at having been the instrument of their relief,--the harmonies of pure affections, without any grating now,--the hope well grounded she thought, of improvement in her uncle and better times for them all,--a childlike peace that was at rest with itself and the world,--these were mingling and interchanging their music, and again and again in the midst of it all, faith rang the last chime in heaven.

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Chapter XLIII

As some lone bird at day's departing hour Sings in the sunbeam of the transient shower, Forgetful though its wings are wet the while.

Bowles.

Happily possessed with the notion that there was some hidden mystery in Fleda's movements, Mrs. Pritchard said not a word about her having gone out, and only spoke in looks her pain at the imprudence of which she had been guilty. But when Fleda asked to have a carriage ordered to take her to the boat in the morning, the good housekeeper could not hold any longer.

"Miss Fleda," said she with a look of very serious remonstrance,--"I don't know what you're thinking of, but I know you're fixing to kill yourself. You are no more fit to go to Queechy to-morrow than you were to be out till seven o'clock this evening; and if you saw yourself you wouldn't want me to say any more. There is not the least morsel of colour in your face, and you look as if you had a mind to get rid of your body altogether as fast as you can! You want to be in bed for two days running, now this minute."

"Thank you, dear Mrs. Pritchard," said Fleda smiling; "you are very careful of me; but I must go home to-morrow, and go to bed afterwards."

The housekeeper looked at her a minute in silence, and then said, "Don't, dear Miss Fleda!"--with an energy of entreaty which brought the tears into Fleda's eyes. But she persisted in desiring the carriage; and Mrs. Pritchard was silenced, observing however that she shouldn't wonder if she wasn't able to go after all. Fleda herself was not without a doubt on the subject before the evening was over. The reaction, complete now, began to make itself felt; and morning settled the question. She was not able even to rise from her bed.

The housekeeper was, in a sort, delighted; and Fleda was in too passive a mood of body and mind to have any care on the subject. The agitation of the past days had given way to an absolute quiet that seemed as if nothing could ever ruffle it again, and this feeling was seconded by the extreme prostration of body. She was a mere child in the hands of her nurse, and had, Mrs. Pritchard said, "if she wouldn't mind her telling,--the sweetest baby-face that ever had so much sense belonging to it."

The morning was half spent in dozing slumbers, when Fleda heard a rush of footsteps, much lighter and sprightlier than good Mrs. Pritchard's, coming up the stairs and pattering along the entry to her room; and with little ceremony in rushed Florence and Constance Evelyn. They almost smothered Fleda with their delighted caresses, and ran so hard their questions about her looks and her illness, that she was well nigh spared the trouble of answering.

"You horrid little creature!" said Constance,--"why didn't you come straight to our house? just think of the injurious suspicions you have exposed us to!--to say nothing of the extent of fiction we have found ourselves obliged to execute. I didn't expect it of you, little Queechy."

Fleda kept her pale face quiet on the pillow, and only smiled her incredulous curiosity.

"But when did you come back, Fleda?" said Miss Evelyn.

"We should never have known a breath about your being here," Constance went on. "We were sitting last night in peaceful unconsciousness of there being any neglected calls upon our friendship in the vicinity, when Mr. Carleton came in and asked for you. Imagine our horror!--we said you had gone out early in the afternoon and had not returned."

"You didn't say that!" said Fleda colouring.

"And he remarked at some length," said Constance, "upon the importance of young ladies having some attendance when they are out late in the evening, and that you in particular were one of those persons--he didn't say, but he intimated, of a slightly volatile disposition,--whom their friends ought not to lose sight of."

"But what brought you to town again, Fleda?" said the elder sister.

"What makes you talk so, Constance?" said Fleda.

"I haven't told you the half!" said Constance demurely. "And then mamma excused herself as well as she could, and Mr. Carleton said very seriously that he knew there was a great element of head-strongness in your character--he had remarked it, he said, when you were arguing with Mr. Stackpole."

"Constance, be quiet!" said her sister. "Will you tell me, Fleda, what you have come to town for? I am dying with curiosity."

"Then it's inordinate curiosity, and ought to be checked, my dear," said Fleda smiling.

"Tell me!"

"I came to take care of some business that could not very well be attended to at a distance."

"Who did you come with?"

"One of our Queechy neighbours that I heard was coming to New York."

"Wasn't your uncle at home?"

"Of course not. If he had been, there would have been no need of my stirring."

"But was there nobody else to do it but you?"

"Uncle Orrin away, you know; and Charlton down at his post--Fort Hamilton, is it?--I forget which fort--he is fast there."

"He is not so very fast," said Constance, "for I see him every now and then in Broadway shouldering Mr. Thorn instead of a musket; and he has taken up the distressing idea that it is part of his duty to oversee the progress of Florence's worsted-work--(I've made over that horrid thing to her, Fleda)--or else his precision has been struck with the anomaly of blue stars on a white ground, and he is studying that,--I don't know which,--and so every few nights he rushes over from Governor's Island, or somewhere, to prosecute enquiries. Mamma is quite concerned about him--she says he is wearing himself out."

The mixture of amusement, admiration, and affection, with which the other sister looked at her and laughed with her was a pretty thing to see.

"But where is your other cousin,--Hugh?" said Florence.

"He was not well."

"Where is your uncle?"

"He will be at home to-day I expect; and so should I have been--I meant to be there as soon as he was,--but I found this morning that I was not well enough,--to my sorrow."

"You were not going alone!"

"O no--a friend of ours was going to-day."

"I never saw anybody with so many friends!" said Florence. "But you are coming to us now, Fleda. How soon are you going to get up?"

"O by to-morrow," said Fleda smiling;--"but I had better stay where I am the little while I shall be here--I must go home the first minute I can find an opportunity."

"But you sha'n't find an opportunity till we've had you," said Constance. "I'm going to bring a carriage for you this afternoon. I could bear the loss of your friendship, my dear, but not the peril of my own reputation. Mr. Carleton is under the impression that you are suffering from a momentary succession of fainting fits, and if we were to leave you here in an empty house to come out of them at your leisure, what would he think of us?"

What would he think!--Oh world! Is this it?

But Fleda was not able to be moved in the afternoon; and it soon appeared that nature would take more revenge than a day's sleep for the rough handling she had had the past week. Fleda could not rise from her bed the next morning; and instead of that a kind of nondescript nervous fever set in; nowise dangerous, but very wearying. She was nevertheless extremely glad of it, for it would serve to explain to all her friends the change of look which had astonished them. They would make it now the token of coming, not of past, evil. The rest she took with her accustomed patience and quietness, thankful for everything after the anxiety and the relief she had just before known.

Dr. Gregory came home from Philadelphia in the height of her attack, and aggravated it for a day or two with the fear of his questioning. But Fleda was surprised at his want of curiosity. He asked her indeed what she had come to town for, but her whispered answer of "Business," seemed to satisfy him, for he did not inquire what the business was. He did ask her furthermore what had made her get sick; but this time he was satisfied more easily still, with a very curious sweet smile which was the utmost reply Fleda's wits at the moment could frame. "Well, get well," said he kissing her heartily once or twice, "and I won't quarrel with you about it."

The getting well however promised to be a leisurely affair. Dr. Gregory staid two or three days, and then went on to Boston, leaving Fleda in no want of him.

Mrs. Pritchard was the tenderest and carefullest of nurres. The Evelyns did everything but nurse her. They sat by her, talked to her, made her laugh, and not seldom made her look sober too, with their wild tales of the world and the world's doings. But they were indeed very affectionate and kind, and Fleda loved them for it. If they wearied her sometimes with their talk, it was a change from the weariness of fever and silence that on the whole was useful.

She was quieting herself one morning, as well as she could, in the midst of both, lying with shut eyes against her pillow, and trying to fix her mind on pleasant things, when she heard Mrs. Pritchard open the door and come in. She knew it was Mrs. Pritchard, so she didn't move nor look. But in a moment, the knowledge that Mrs. Pritchard's feet had stopped just by the bed, and a strange sensation of something delicious saluting her made her open her eyes; when they lighted upon a huge bunch of violets, just before them and in most friendly neighbourhood to her nose. Fleda started up, and her "Oh!" fairly made the housekeeper laugh; it was the very quintessence of gratification.

"Where did you get them?"

"I didn't get them indeed, Miss Fleda," said the housekeeper gravely, with an immense amount of delighted satisfaction.

"Delicious!--Where did they come from?"

"Well they must have come from a greenhouse, or hot-house, or something of that kind, Miss Fleda,--these things don't grow nowhere out o' doors at this time."

Mrs. Pritchard guessed Fleda had got the clue, from her quick change of colour and falling eye. There was a quick little smile too; and "How kind!" was upon the end of Fleda's tongue, but it never got any further. Her energies, so far as expression was concerned, seemed to be concentrated in the act of smelling. Mrs. Pritchard stood by.

"They must be put in water," said Fleda,--"I must have a dish for them--Dear Mrs. Pritchard, will you get me one?"

The housekeeper went smiling to herself. The dish was brought, the violets placed in it, and a little table at Fleda's request was set by the side of the bed close to her pillow, for them to stand upon. And Fleda lay on her pillow and looked at them.

There never were purer-breathed flowers than those. All the pleasant associations of Fleda's life seemed to hang about them, from the time when her childish eyes had first made acquaintance with violets, to the conversation in the library a few days ago; and painful things stood aloof; they had no part. The freshness of youth, and the sweetness of spring-time, and all the kindly influences which had ever joined with both to bless her, came back with their blessing in the violets' reminding breath. Fleda shut her eyes and she felt it; she opened her eyes, and the little double blue things smiled at her good humouredly and said, "Here we are--you may shut them again." And it was curious how often Fleda gave them a smile back as she did so.

Mrs. Pritchard thought Fleda lived upon the violets that day rather than upon food and medicine; or at least, she said, they agreed remarkably well together. And the next day it was much the same.

"What will you do when they are withered?" she said that evening. "I shall have to see and get some more for you."

"Oh they will last a great while," said Fleda smiling.

But the next morning Mrs. Pritchard came into her room with a great bunch of roses, the very like of the one Fleda had had at the Evelyns'. She delivered them with a sort of silent triumph, and then as before stood by to enjoy Fleda and the flowers together. But the degree of Fleda's wonderment, pleasure, and gratitude, made her reception of them, outwardly at least, this time rather grave.

"You may throw the others away now, Miss Fleda," said the housekeeper smiling.

"Indeed I shall not!--"

"The violets, I suppose, is all gone," Mrs. Pritchard went on;--but I never did see such a bunch of roses as that since I lived anywhere.--They have made a rose of you, Miss Fleda."

"How beautiful!--" was Fleda's answer.

"Somebody--he didn't say who--desired to know particularly how Miss Ringgan was to-day."

"Somebody is very kind!" said Fleda from the bottom of her heart. "But dear Mrs. Pritchard, I shall want another dish."

Somebody was kind, she thought more and more; for there came every day or two the most delicious bouquets, every day different. They were at least equal in their soothing and refreshing influences to all the efforts of all the Evelyns and Mrs. Pritchard put together. There never came any name with them, and there never was any need. Those bunches of flowers certainly had a physiognomy; and to Fleda were (not the flowers but the choosing, cutting, and putting of them together) the embodiment of an amount of grace, refined feeling, generosity, and kindness, that her imagination never thought of in connection with but one person. And his kindness was answered, perhaps Mrs. Pritchard better than Fleda guessed how well, from the delighted colour and sparkle of the eye with which every fresh arrival was greeted as it walked into her room. By Fleda's order the bouquets were invariably put out of sight before the Evelyns made their first visit in the morning, and not brought out again till all danger of seeing them any more for the day was past. The regular coming of these floral messengers confirmed Mrs. Pritchard in her mysterious surmises about Fleda, which were still further strengthened by this incomprehensible order; and at last she got so into the spirit of the thing that if she heard an untimely ring at the door she would catch up a glass of flowers and run as if they had been contraband, without a word from anybody.

The Evelyns wrote to Mrs. Rossitur, by Fleda's desire, so as not to alarm her; merely saying that Fleda was not quite well, and that they meant to keep her a little while to recruit herself; and that Mrs. Rossitur must send her some clothes. This last clause was tha particular addition of Constance.

The fever lasted a fortnight, and then went off by degrees, leaving her with a very small portion of her ordinary strength. Fleda was to go to the Evelyns as soon as she could bear it; at present she was only able to come down to the little back parlour and sit in the doctor's arm chair, and eat jelly, and sleep, and look at Constance, and when Constance was not there look at her flowers. She could hardly bear a book as yet. She hadn't a bit of colour in her face, Mrs. Pritchard said, but she looked better than when she came to town; and to herself the good housekeeper added, that she looked happier too. No doubt that was true. Fleda's principal feeling, ever since she lay down in her bed, had been thankfulness; and now that the ease of returning health was joined to this feeling, her face with all its subdued gravity was as untroubled in its expression as the faces of her flowers.

She was disagreeably surprised one day, after she had been two or three days down stairs, by a visit from Mrs. Thorn. In her well-grounded dread of seeing one person Fleda had given strict orders that no gentleman should be admitted; she had not counted upon this invasion. Mrs. Thorn had always been extremely kind to her, but though Fleda gave her credit for thorough good-heartedness, and a true liking for herself, she could not disconnect her attentions from another thought, and therefore always wished them away; and never had her kind face been more thoroughly disagreeable to Fleda than when it made its appearance in the doctor's little back parlour on this occasion. With even more than her usual fondness, or Pleda's excited imagination fancied so, Mrs. Thorn lavished caresses upon her, and finally besought her to go out and take the air in her carriage. Fleda tried most earnestly to get rid of this invitation, and was gently unpersuadable, till the lady at last was brought to promise that she should see no creature during the drive but herself. An ominous promise! but Fleda did not know any longer how, to refuse without hurting a person for whom she had really a grateful regard. So she went. And doubted afterwards exceedingly whether she had done well.

She took special good care to see nobody again till she went to the Evelyns. But then precautions were at an end. It was no longer possible to keep herself shut up. She had cause, poor child, the very first night of her coming, to wish herself back again.

This first evening she would fain have pleaded weakness as her excuse and gone to her room, but Constance laid violent hands on her and insisted that she should stay at least a little while with them. And she seemed fated to see all her friends in a bevy. First came Charlton; then followed the Decaturs, whom she knew and liked very well, and engrossed her, happily before her cousin had time to make any enquiries; then came Mr. Carleton; then Mr. Stackpole. Then Mr. Thorn, in expectation of whom Fleda's breath had been coming and going painfully all the evening. She could not meet him without a strange mixture of embarrassment and confusion with the gratitude she wished to express, an embarrassment not at all lessened by the air of happy confidence with which he came forward to her. It carried an intimation that almost took away the little strength she had. And if anything could have made his presence more intolerable, it was the feeling she could not get rid of that it was the cause why Mr. Carleton did not come near her again; though she prolonged her stay in the drawing-room in the hope that he would. It proved to be for Mr. Thorn's benefit alone.

"Well you staid all the evening after all," said Constance as they were going up stairs.

"Yes--I wish I hadn't," said Fleda. "I wonder when I shall be likely to find a chance of getting back to Queechy."

"You're not fit yet, so you needn't trouble yourself about it," said Constance. "We'll find you plenty of chances."

Fleda could not think of Mr. Thorn without trembling. His manner meant--so much more than it had any right, or than she had counted upon. He seemed--she pressed her hands upon her face to get rid of the impression--he seemed to take for granted precisely that which she had refused to admit; he seemed to reckon as paid for that which she had declined to set a price upon. Her uncle's words and manner came up in her memory. She could see nothing best to do but to get home as fast as possible. She had no one here to fall back upon. Again that vision of father and mother and grandfather flitted across her fancy; and though Fleda's heart ended by resting down on that foundation to which it always recurred, it rested with a great many tears.

For several days she denied herself absolutely to morning visitors of every kind. But she could not entirely absent herself from the drawing-room in the evening; and whenever the family were at home there was a regular levee. Mr. Thorn could not be avoided then. He was always there, and always with that same look and manner of satisfied confidence. Fleda was as grave, as silent, as reserved, as she could possibly be and not be rude; but he seemed to take it in excellent good part, as being half indisposition and half timidity. Fleda set her face earnestly towards home, and pressed Mrs. Evelyn to find her an opportunity, weak or strong, of going there; but for those days as yet none presented itself.

Mr. Carleton was at the house almost as often as Mr. Thorn, seldom staying so long however, and never having any more to do with Fleda than he had that first evening. Whenever he did come in contact with her, he was, she thought, as grave as he was graceful. That was to be sure his common manner in company, yet she could not help thinking there was some difference since the walk they had taken together, and it grieved her.

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Chapter XLIV

The beat-laid schemes o' mice and men Gang aft agley.

Burns.

After a few days Charlton verified what Constance had said about his not being very fast at Fort Hamilton, by coming again to see them one morning. Fleda asked him if he could not get another furlough to go with her home, but he declared he was just spending one which was near out; and he could not hope for a third in some time; he must be back at his post by the day after to-morrow.

"When do you want to go, coz?"

"I would to-morrow, if I had anybody to go with me," said Fleda sighing.

"No you wouldn't," said Constance,--"you are well enough to go out now, and you forget we are all to make Mrs. Thorn happy to-morrow night."

"I am not," said Fleda.

"Not? you can't help yourself; you must; you said you would."

"I did not indeed."

"Well then I said it for you, and that will do just as well. Why my dear, if you don't--just think!--the Thorns will be in a state--I should prefer to go through a hedge of any description rather than meet the trying demonstrations which will encounter me on every side."

"I am going to Mrs. Decatur's," said Fleda;--"she invited me first, and I owe it to her, she has asked me so often and so kindly."

"I shouldn't think you'd enjoy yourself there," said Florence; "they don't talk a bit of English these nights. If I was going, my dear, I would act as your interpreter, but my destiny lies in another direction."

"If I cannot make anybody understand my French I will get somebody to condescend to my English," said Fleda.

"Why do you talk French?" was the instant question from both mouths.

"Unless she has forgotten herself strangely," said Charlton. "Talk! she will talk to anybody's satisfaction--that happens to differ from her; and I think her tongue cares very little which language it wags in. There is no danger about Fleda's enjoying herself, where people are talking."

Fleda laughed at him, and the Evelyns rather stared at them both.

"But we are all going to Mrs. Thorn's? you can't go alone?"

"I will make Charlton take me," said Fleda,--"or rather I will take him, if he will let me. Will you, Charlton? will you take care of me to Mrs. Decatur's to-morrow night?"

"With the greatest pleasure, my dear coz, but I have another engagement in the course of the evening."

"Oh that is nothing," said Fleda;--"if you will only go with me, that is all I care for. You needn't stay but ten minutes. And you can call for me," she added, turning to the Evelyns,--"as you come back from Mrs. Thorn's."

To this no objection could be made, and the ensuing raillery Fleda bore with steadiness at least if not with coolness; for Charlton heard it, and she was distressed.

She went to Mrs. Decatur's the next evening in greater elation of spirits than she had known since she left her uncle's; delighted to be missing from the party at Mrs. Thorn's, and hoping that Mr. Lewis would be satisfied with this very plain hint of her mind. A little pleased too to feel quite free, alone from too friendly eyes, and ears that had too lively a concern in her sayings and doings. She did not in the least care about going to Mrs. Decatur's; her joy was that she was not at the other place. But there never was elation so outwardly quiet. Nobody would have suspected its existence.

The evening was near half over when Mr. Carleton came in. Fleda had half hoped he would be there, and now immediately hoped she might have a chance to see him alone and to thank him for his flowers; she had not been able to do that yet. He presently came up to speak to her just as Charlton, who had found attraction enough to keep him so long, came to tell he was going.

"You are looking better," said the former, as gravely as ever, but with an eye of serious interest that made the word something.

"I am better," said Fleda gratefully.

"So much better that she is in a hurry to make herself worse," said her cousin. "Mr. Carleton, you are a professor of medicine, I believe,--I have an indistinct impression of your having once prescribed a ride on horseback for somebody;--wouldn't you recommend some measure of prudence to her consideration?"

"In general," Mr. Carleton answered gravely; "but in the present case I could not venture upon any special prescription, Capt. Rossitur."

"As for instance, that she should remain in New York till she is fit to leave it?--By the way, what brought you here again in such a hurry, Fleda? I haven't heard that yet."

The question was rather sudden. Fleda was a little taken by surprise; her face shewed some pain and confusion both. Mr. Carleton prevented her answer, she could not tell whether with design.

"What imprudence do you charge your cousin with, Capt. Rossitur?"

"Why she is in a great hurry to get back to Queechy, before she is able to go anywhere--begging me to find an escort for her. It is lucky I can't. I didn't know I ever should be glad to be 'posted up' in this fashion, but I am."

"You have not sought very far, Capt. Rossitur," said the voice of Thorn behind him. "Here is one that will be very happy to attend Miss Fleda, whenever she pleases."

Fleda's shocked start and change of countenance was seen by more eyes than one pair. Thorn's fell, and a shade crossed his countenance too, for an instant, that Fleda's vision was too dazzled to see. Mr. Carleton moved away.

"Why are you going to Queechy?" said Charlton astonished.

His friend was silent a moment, perhaps for want of power to speak. Fleda dared not look at him.

"It is not impossible,--unless this lady forbid me. I am not a fixture."

"But what brought you here, man, to offer your services?" said Charlton;--"most ungallantly leaving so many pairs of bright eyes to shine upon your absence."

"Mr. Thorn will not find himself in darkness here, Capt. Rossitur," said Mrs. Decatur.

"It's my opinion he ought, ma'am," said Charlton.

"It is my opinion every man ought, who makes his dependance on gleams of sunshine," said Mr. Thorn rather cynically. "I cannot say I was thinking of brightness before or behind me."

"I should think not," said Charlton;--"you don't look as if you had seen any in a good while."

"A light goes out every now and then," said Thorn, "and it takes one's eyes some time to get accustomed to it. What a singular world we live in, Mrs. Decatur!"

"That is so new an idea," said the lady laughing, "that I must request an explanation."

"What new experience of its singularity has your wisdom made?" sid his friend. "I thought you and the world knew each other's faces pretty well before."

"Then you have not heard the news?"

"What news?"

"Hum--I suppose it is not about yet," said Thorn composedly. "No--you haven't heard it."

"But what, man?" said Charlton,--"let's hear your news, for I must be off."

"Why--but it is no more than rumour yet--but it is said that strange things are coming to light about a name that used to be held in very high respect."

"In this city?"

"In this city?--yes--it is said proceedings are afoot against one of our oldest citizens, on charge of a very grave offence."

"Who?--and what offence? what do you mean?"

"Is it a secret, Mr. Thorn?" said Mrs. Decatur.

"If you have not heard, perhaps it is as well not to mention names too soon;--if it comes out it will be all over directly; possibly the family may hush it up, and in that case the less said the better; but those have it in hand that will not let it slip through their fingers."

Mrs. Decatur turned away, saying "how shocking such things were;" and Thorn, with a smile which did not however light up his face, said,

"You may be off, Charlton, with no concern for the bright eyes you leave behind you--I will endeavour to atone for my negligence elsewhere, by my mindfulness of them."

"Don't excuse you," said Charlton;--but his eye catching at the moment another attraction opposite in the form of man or woman, instead of quitting the room he leisurely crossed it to speak to the new-comer; and Thorn with an entire change of look and manner pressed forward and offered his arm to Fleda, who was looking perfectly white. If his words had needed any commentary it was given by his eye as it met hers in speaking the last sentence to Mrs. Decatur. No one was near whom she knew and Mr. Thorn led her out to a little back room where the gentlemen had thrown off their cloaks, where the air was fresher, and placing her on a seat stood waiting before her till she could speak to him.

"What do you mean, Mr. Thorn?" Fleda looked as much as said, when she could meet his face.

"I may rather ask you what you mean, Miss Fleda," he answered gravely.

Fleda drew breath painfully.

"I mean nothing," she said lowering her head again,--"I have done nothing--"

"Did you think I meant nothing when I agreed to do all you wished?"

"I thought you said you would do it freely," she said, with a tone of voice that might have touched anybody, there was such a sinking of heart in it.

"Didn't you understand me?"

"And is it all over now?" said Fleda after a pause.

"Not yet--but it soon may be. A weak hand may stop it now,--it will soon be beyond the power of the strongest."

"And what becomes of your promise that it should no more be heard of?" said Fleda, looking up at him with a colourless face but eyes that put the question forcibly nevertheless.

"Is any promise bound to stand without its conditions?"

"I made no conditions," said Fleda quickly.

"Forgive me,--but did you not permit me to understand them?"

"No!--or if I did I could not help it."

"Did you say that you wished to help it?" said he gently.

"I must say so now, then, Mr. Thorn," said Fleda withdrawing the hand he had taken;--"I did not mean or wish you to think so, but I was too ill to speak--almost to know what I did--It was not my fault--"

"You do not make it mine, that I chose such a time, selfishly, I grant, to draw from your lips the words that are more to me than life?"

"Cannot you be generous?"--for once, she was very near saying.

"Where you are concerned, I do not know how."

Fleda was silent a moment, and then bowed her face in her hands.

"May I not ask that question of you?" said he, bending down and endeavouring to remove them;--"will you not say--or look--that word that will make others happy beside me?"

"I cannot, sir."

"Not for their sakes?" he said calmly.

"Can you ask me to do for theirs what I would not for my own?"

"Yes--for mine," he said, with a meaning deliberateness.

Fleda was silent, with a face of white determination.

"It will be beyond eluding, as beyond recall, the second time. I may seem selfish--I am selfish--but dear Miss Ringgan you do not see all,--you who make me so can make me anything else with a touch of your hand--it is selfishness that would be bound to your happiness, if you did but entrust it to me."

Fleda neither spoke nor looked at him and rose up from her chair.

"Is this your generosity?" he said, pointedly though gently.

"That is not the question now, sir," said Fleda, who was trembling painfully. "I cannot do evil that good may come."

"But evil?" said he detaining her,--"what evil do I ask of you?--to remove evil, I do."

Fleda clasped her hands, but answered calmly,

"I cannot make any pretences, sir;--I cannot promise to give what is not in my power."

"In whose power then?" said he quickly.

A feeling of indignation came to Fleda's aid, and she turned away. But he stopped her still.

"Do you think I do not understand?" he said with a covert sneer that had the keenness and hardness, and the brightness, of steel.

"I do not, sir," said Fleda.

"Do you think I do not know whom you came here to meet?"

Fleda's glance of reproach was a most innocent one, but it did not check him.

"Has that fellow renewed his old admiration of you?" he went on in the same tone.

"Do not make me desire his old protection," said Fleda, her gentle face roused to a flush of displeasure.

"Protection!" said Charlton coming in,--"who wants protection? here it is--protection from what? my old friend Lewis? what the deuce does this lady want of protection, Mr. Thorn?"

It was plain enough that Fleda wanted it, from the way she was drooping upon his arm.

"You may ask the lady herself," said Thorn, in the same tone he had before used,--"I have not the honour to be her spokesman."

"She don't need one," said Charlton,--"I addressed myself to you--speak for yourself, man."

"I am not sure that it would be her pleasure I should," said Thorn. "Shall I tell this gentleman, Miss Ringgan, who needs protection, and from what?--"

Fleda raised her head, and putting her hand on his arm looked a concentration of entreaty--lips were sealed.

"Will you give me," said he gently taking the hand in his own, "your sign manual for Capt. Rossitur's security? It is not too late.--Ask it of her, sir!"

"What does this mean?" said Charlton looking from his cousin to his friend.

"You shall have the pleasure of knowing, sir, just so soon as I find it convenient."

"I will have a few words with you on this subject, my fine fellow," said Capt. Rossitur, as the other was preparing to leave the room.

"You had better speak to somebody else," said Thorn. "But I am ready."

Charlton muttered an imprecation upon his absurdity, and turned his attention to Fleda, who needed it. And yet desired anything else. For a moment she had an excuse for not answering his questions in her inability; and then opportunely Mrs. Decatur came in to look after her; and she was followed by her daughter. Fleda roused all her powers to conceal and command her feelings; rallied herself; said she had been a little weak and faint; drank water, and declared herself able to go back into the drawing-room. To go home would have been her utmost desire, but at the instant her energies were all bent to the one point of putting back thought and keeping off suspicion. And in the first hurry and bewilderment of distress the dread of finding herself alone with Charlton till she had had time to collect her thoughts would of itself have been enough to prevent her accepting the proposal.

She entered the drawing-room again on Mrs. Decatur's arm, and had stood a few minutes talking or listening, with that same concentration of all her faculties upon the effort to bear up outwardly, when Charlton came up to ask if he should leave her. Fleda made no objection, and he was out of her sight, far enough to be beyond reach or recall, when it suddenly struck her that she ought not to have let him go without speaking to him,--without entreating him to see her in the morning before he saw Thorn. The sickness of this new apprehension was too much for poor Fleda's power of keeping up. She quietly drew her arm from Mrs. Decatur's, saying that she would sit down; and sought out a place for herself apart from the rest by an engraving stand; where for a little while, not to seem unoccupied, she turned over print after print that she did not see. Even that effort failed at last; and she sat gazing at one of Sir Thomas Lawrence's bright-faced children, and feeling as if in herself the tides of life were setting back upon their fountain preparatory to being still forever. She became sensible that some one was standing beside the engravings, and looked up at Mr. Carleton.

"Are you ill?" he said, very gently and tenderly.

The answer was a quick motion of Fleda's hand to her head, speaking sudden pain, and perhaps sudden difficulty of self-command. She did not speak.

"Will you have anything?"

A whispered "no."

"Would you like to return to Mrs. Evelyn's?--I have a carriage here."

With a look of relief that seemed to welcome him as her good angel, Pleda instantly rose up, and took the arm he offered her. She would have hastened from the room then, but he gently checked her pace; and Fleda was immediately grateful for the quiet and perfect shielding from observation that his manner secured her. He went with her up the stairs, and to the very door of the dressing-room. There Fleda hurried on her shoes and mufflers in trembling fear that some one might come and find her, gained Mr. Carleton's arm again, and was placed in the carriage.

The drive was in perfect silence, and Fleda's agony deepened and strengthened with every minute. She had freedom to think, and thought did but carry a torch into chamber after chamber of misery. There seemed nothing to be done. She could not get hold of Charlton; and if she could?--Nothing could be less amenable than his passions to her gentle restraints. Mr. Thorn was still less approachable or manageable, except in one way, that she did not even think of. His insinuations about Mr. Carleton did not leave even a tinge of embarrassment upon her mind; they were cast from her as insulting absurdities, which she could not think of a second time without shame.

The carriage rolled on with them a long time without a word being said. Mr. Carleton knew that she was not weeping nor faint. But as the light of the lamps was now and then cast within the carriage he saw that her face looked ghastly; and he saw too that its expression was not of a quiet sinking under sorrow, nor of an endeavour to bear up against it, but a wild searching gaze into the darkness of possibilities. They had near reached Mrs. Evelyn's.

"I cannot see you so," he said, gently touching the hand which lay listlessly beside him. "You are ill!"

Again the same motion of the other hand to her face, the quick token of great pain suddenly stirred.

"For the sake of old times, let me ask," said he, "can nothing be done?"

Those very gentle and delicate tones of sympathy and kindness Were too much to bear. The hand was snatched away to be pressed to her face. Oh that those old times were back again, and she a child that could ask his protection!--No one to give it now.

He was silent a moment. Fleda's head bowed beneath the mental pressure.

"Has Dr. Gregory returned?"

The negative answer was followed by a half-uttered exclamation of longing,--checked midway, but sufficiently expressive of her want.

"Do you trust me?" he said after another second of pausing.

"Perfectly!" said Fleda amidst her tears, too much excited to know what she was saying, and in her simplicity half forgetting that she was not a child still;--"more than any one in the world!"

The few words he had spoken, and the manner of them, had curiously borne her back years in a minute; she seemed to be under his care more than for the drive home. He did not speak again for a minute; when he did his tone was very quiet and lower than before.

"Give me what a friend can have in charge to do for you, and it shall be done."

Fleda raised her head and looked out of the window in a silence of doubt. The carriage stopped at Mrs. Evelyn's.

"Not now," said Mr. Carleton, as the servant was about to open the door;--"drive round the square--till I speak to you."

Fleda was motionless and almost breathless with uncertainty. If Charlton could be hindered from meeting Mr. Thorn--But how, could Mr. Carleton effect it?--But there was that in him or in his manner which invariably created confidence in his ability, or fear of it, even in strangers; and how much more in her who had a childish but very clear recollection of several points in his character which confirmed the feeling. And might not something be done, through his means, to facilitate her uncle's escape? of whom she seemed to herself now the betrayer.--But to tell him the story I--a person of his high nice notions of character--what a distance it would put even between his friendship and her,--but that thought was banished instantly, with one glance at Mr. Thorn's imputation of ungenerousness. To sacrifice herself to him would not have been generosity,--to lower herself in the esteem of a different character, she felt, called for it. There was time even then too for one swift thought of the needlessness and bitter fruits of wrong-doing. But here they were;--should she make them known?--and trouble Mr. Carleton, friend though he were, with these miserable matters in which he had no concern?--She sat with a beating heart and a very troubled brow, but a brow as easy to read as a child's. It was the trouble of anxious questioning. Mr. Carleton watched it for a little while,--undecided as ever, and more pained.

"You said you trusted me," he said quietly, taking her hand again.

"But--I don't know what you could do, Mr. Carleton," Fleda said with a trembling voice.

"Will you let me be the judge of that?"

"I cannot bear to trouble you with these miserable things--"

"You cannot," said he with that same quiet tone, "but by thinking and saying so. I can have no greater pleasure than to take pains for you."

Fleda heard these words precisely and with the same simplicity as a child would have heard them, and answered with a very frank burst of tears,--soon, as soon as possible, according to her custom, driven back; though even in the act of quieting herself they broke forth again as uncontrollably as at first. But Mr. Carleton had not long to wait. She raised her head again after a short struggle, with the wonted look of patience sitting upon her brow, and wiping away her tears paused merely for breath and voice. He was perfectly silent.

"Mr. Carleton, I will tell you," she began;--"I hardly know whether I ought or ought not,--" and her hand went to her forehead for a moment,--"but I cannot think to-night--and I have not a friend to apply to--"

She hesitated; and then went on, with a voice that trembled and quavered sadly.

"Mr. Thorn has a secret--of my uncle's--in his power--which he promised--without conditions--to keep faithfully; and now insists that he will not--but upon conditions--"

"And cannot the conditions be met?"

"No--and--O I may as well tell you at once?" said Fleda in bitter sorrow,--"it is a crime that he committed--"

"Mr. Thorn?"

"No--oh no!" said Fleda weeping bitterly,--"not he--"

Her agitation was excessive for a moment; then she threw it off, and spoke more collectedly, though with exceeding depression of manner.

"It was long ago--when he was in trouble--he put Mr. Thorn's name to a note, and never was able to take it up;--and nothing was ever heard about it till lately; and last week he was going to leave the country, and Mr. Thorn promised that the proceedings should be entirely given up; and that was why I came to town, to find uncle Rolf and bring him home; and I did, and he is gone; and now Mr. Thorn says it is all going on again and that he will not escape this time;--and I have done it!--"

Fleda writhed again in distress.

"Thorn promised without conditions?"

"Certainly--he promised freely--and now he insists upon them; and you see uncle Rolf would have been safe out of the country now, if it hadn't been for me--"

"I think I can undo this snarl," said Mr. Carleton calmly.

"But that is not all," said Fleda, a little quieted;--"Charlton came in this evening when we were talking, and he was surprised to find me so, and Mr. Thorn was in a very ill humour, and some words passed between them; and Charlton threatened to see him again; and Oh if he does!" said poor Fleda,--"that will finish our difficulties!--for Charlton is very hot, and I know how it will end--how it must end--"

"Where is your cousin to be found?"

"I don't know where he lodges when he is in town."

"You did not leave him at Mrs. Decatur's. Do you know where he is this evening?"

"Yes!" said Fleda, wondering that she should have heard and remembered,--"he said he was going to meet a party of his brother officers at Mme. Fouché's--a sister-in-law of his Colonel, I believe."

"I know her. This note--was it the name of the young Mr. Thorn, or of his father that was used?"

"Of his father!--"

"Has he appeared at all in this business?"

"No," said Fleda, feeling for the first time that there was something notable about it.

"What sort of person do you take him to be?"

"Very kind--very pleasant, always, he has been to me, and I should think to everybody,--very unlike the son"

Mr. Carleton had ordered the coachman back to Mrs. Evelyn's.

"Do you know the amount of the note? It may be desirable that I should not appear uninformed."

"It was for four thousand dollars" Fleda said in the low voice of shame.

"And when given?"

"I don't know exactly--but six years ago--some time in the winter of '43, it must have been."

He said no more till the carriage stopped; and then before handing her out of it, lifted her hand to his lips. That carried all the promise Fleda wanted from him. How oddly, how curiously, her hand kept the feeling of that kiss upon it all night.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter XLV

Heat not a furnace for your friend so hot That it may singe yourself.

Shakspeare.

Mr. Carleton went to Mme. Fouché's, who received most graciously, as any lady would, his apology for introducing himself unlooked-for, and begged that he would commit the same fault often. As soon as practicable he made his way to Charlton, and invited him to breakfast with him the next morning.

Mrs. Carleton always said it never was known that Guy was refused anything he had a mind to ask. Charlton, though taken by surprise, and certainly not too much prepossessed in his favour, was won by an influence that where its owner chose to exert it was generally found irresistible; and not only accepted the invitation, but was conscious to himself of doing it with a good deal of pleasure. Even when Mr. Carleton made the further request that Capt. Rossitur would in the mean time see no one on business, of any kind, intimating that the reason would then be given, Charlton though startling a little at this restraint upon his freedom of motion could do no other than give the desired promise, and with the utmost readiness.

Guy then went to Mr. Thorn's.--It was by this time not early.

"Mr. Lewis Thorn--is he at home?"

"He is, sir," said the servant admitting him rather hesitatingly.

"I wish to see him a few moments on business."

"It is no hour for business," said the voice of Mr. Lewis from over the balusters;--"I can't see anybody to-night."

"I ask but a few minutes," said Mr. Carleton. "It is important."

"It may be any thing!" said Thorn. "I won't do business after twelve o'clock."

Mr. Carleton desired the servant to carry his card, with the same request, to Mr, Thorn the elder.

"What's that?" said Thorn as the man came up stairs,--"my father?--Pshaw! he can't attend to it--Well, walk up, sir, if you please!--may as well have it over and done with it."

Mr. Carleton mounted the stairs and followed the young gentleman into an apartment to which he rapidly led the way.

"You've no objections to this, I suppose?" Thorn remarked as he locked the door behind them.

"Certainly not," said Mr. Carleton coolly, taking out the key and putting it in his pocket;--"my business is private--it needs no witnesses."

"Especially as it so nearly concerns yourself," said Thorn sneeringly.

"Which part of it, sir?" said Mr. Carleton with admirable breeding. It vexed at the same time that it constrained Thorn.

"I'll let you know presently!" he said, hurriedly proceeding to the lower end of the room where some cabinets stood, and unlocking door after door in mad haste.

The place had somewhat the air of a study, perhaps Thorn's private room. A long table stood in the middle of the floor, with materials for writing, and a good many books were about the room, in cases and on the tables, with maps and engravings and portfolios, and a nameless collection of articles, the miscellaneous gathering of a man of leisure and some literary taste.

Their owner presently came back from the cabinets with tokens of a very different kind about him.

"There, sir!" he said, offering to his guest a brace of most inhospitable-looking pistols,--"take one and take your stand, as soon as you please--nothing like coming to the point at once!"

He was heated and excited even more than his manner indicated. Mr. Carleton glanced at him and stood quietly examining the pistol he had taken. It was all ready loaded.

"This is a business that comes upon me by surprise," he said calmly,--"I don't know what I have to do with this, Mr. Thorn."

"Well I do," said Thorn, "and that's enough. Take your place, sir! You escaped me once, but"--and he gave his words dreadful emphasis,--"you won't do it the second time!"

"You do not mean," said the other, "that your recollection of such an offence has lived out so many years?"

"No sir! no sir!" said Thorn,--"it is not that. I despise it, as I do the offender. You have touched me more nearly."

"Let me know in what," said Mr. Carleton turning his pistol's mouth down upon the table and leaning on it.

"You know already,--what do you ask me for?" said Thorn who was foaming,--"if you say you don't you lie heartily. I'll tell you nothing but out of this--"

"I have not knowingly injured you, sir,--in a whit."

"Then a Carleton may be a liar," said Thorn, "and you are one--dare say not the first. Put yourself there, sir, will you?"

"Well," said Guy carelessly,--"if it is decreed that I am to fight of course there's no help for it; but as I have business on hand that might not be so well done afterwards I must beg your attention to that in the first place."

"No, sir," said Thorn,--"I'll attend to nothing--I'll hear nothing from you. I know you!--I'll not hear a word. I'll see to the business!--Take your stand."

"I will not have anything to do with pistols," said Mr. Carleton coolly, laying his out of his hand;--"they make too much noise."

"Who cares for the noise?" said Thorn. "It won't hurt you; and the door is locked."

"But people's ears are not," said Guy.

Neither tone nor attitude nor look had changed in the least its calm gracefulness. It began to act upon Thorn.

"Well, in the devil's name, have your own way," said he, throwing down his pistol too, and going back to the cabinets at the lower end of the room,--"there are rapiers here, if you like them better--I don't,--the shortest the best for me,--but here they are--take your choice."

Guy examined them carefully for a few minutes, and then laid them both, with a firm hand upon them, on the table.

"I will choose neither, Mr. Thorn, till you have heard me. I came here to see you on the part of others--I should be a recreant to my charge if I allowed you or myself to draw me into anything that might prevent my fulfilling it. That must be done first."

Thorn looked with a lowering brow on the indications of his opponent's eye and attitude; they left him plainly but one course to take.

"Well speak and have done," he said as in spite of himself;--but I know it already."

"I am here as a friend of Mr. Rossitur."

"Why don't you say a friend of somebody else, and come nearer the truth?" said Thorn.

There was an intensity of expression in his sneer, but pain was there as well as anger; and it was with even a feeling of pity that Mr. Carleton answered,

"The truth will be best reached, sir, if I am allowed to choose my own words."

There was no haughtiness in the steady gravity of this speech, whatever there was in the quiet silence he permitted to follow. Thorn did not break it.

"I am informed of the particulars concerning this prosecution of Mr. Rossitur--I am come here to know if no terms can be obtained."

"No!" said Thorn,--"no terms--I won't speak of terms. The matter will be followed up now till the fellow is lodged in jail, where he deserves to be."

"Are you aware, sir, that this, if done, will be the cause of very great distress to a family who have not deserved it?"

"That can't be helped," said Thorn. "Of course!--it must cause distress, but you can't act upon that. Of course when a man turns rogue he ruins his family--that's part of his punishment--and a just one."

"The law is just," said Mr. Carleton,--"but a friend may be merciful."

"I don't pretend to be a friend," said Thorn viciously,--"and I have no cause to be merciful. I like to bring a man to public shame when he has forfeited his title to anything else; and I intend that Mr. Rossitur shall become intimately acquainted with the interior of the State's Prison."

"Did it ever occur to you that public shame might fall upon other than Mr. Rossitur? and without the State Prison?"

Thorn fixed a somewhat startled look upon the steady powerful eye of his opponent, and did not like its meaning.

"You must explain yourself, sir," he said haughtily.

"I am acquainted with all the particulars of this proceeding, Mr. Thorn. If it goes abroad, so surely will they."

"She told you, did she?" said Thorn in a sudden flash of fury.

Mr. Carleton was silent, with his air of imperturbable reserve, telling and expressing nothing but a cool independence that put the world at a distance.

"Ha!" said Thorn,--"it is easy to see why our brave Englishman comes here to solicit 'terms' for his honest friend Rossitur--he would not like the scandal of franking letters to Sing Sing. Come, sir," he said snatching up the pistol,--"our business is ended--come, I say! or I won't wait for you."

But the pistol was struck from his baud.

"Not yet," said Mr. Carleton calmly,--"you shall have your turn at these,--mind, I promise you;--but my business must be done first--till then, let them alone!"

"Well what is it?" said Thorn impatiently. "Rossitur will be a convict, I tell you; so you'll have to give up all thoughts of his niece, or pocket her shame along with her. What more have you got to say? that's all your business, I take it."

"You are mistaken, Mr. Thorn," said Mr. Carleton gravely.

"Am I? In what?"

"In every position of your last speech."

"It don't affect your plans and views, I suppose, personally, whether this prosecution is continued or not?"

"It does not in the least."

"It is indifferent to you, I suppose, what sort of a Queen consort you carry to your little throne of a provinciality down yonder?"

"I will reply to you, sir, when you come back to the subject," said Mr. Carleton coldly.

"You mean to say that your pretensions have not been in the way of mine?"

"I have made none, sir."

"Doesn't she like you?"

"I have never asked her."

"Then what possessed her to tell you all this to-night?"

"Simply because I was an old friend and the only one at hand, I presume."

"And you do not look for any reward of your services, of course?"

"I wish for none, sir, but her relief."

"Well, it don't signify," said Thorn with a mixture of expressions in his face,--"if I believed you, which I don't,--it don't signify a hair what you do, when once this matter is known. I should never think of advancing my pretensions into a felon's family."

"You know that the lady in whose welfare you take so much interest will in that case suffer aggravated distress as having been the means of hindering Mr. Rossitur's escape,"

"Can't help it," said Thorn, beating the table with a ruler;--"so she has; she must suffer for it. It isn't my fault."

"You are willing then to abide the consequences of a full disclosure of all the circumstances?--for part will not come out without the whole?"

"There is happily nobody to tell them," said Thorn with a sneer.

"Pardon me--they will not only be told, but known thoroughly in all the circles in this country that know Mr. Thorn's name."

"The lady" said Thorn in the same tone, "would hardly relish such a publication of her name--her welfare would be scantily advantaged by it."

"I will take the risk of that upon myself," said Mr. Carleton quietly; "and the charge of the other."

"You dare not!" said Thorn. "You shall not go alive out of this room to do it! Let me have it, sir! you said you would--"

His passion was at a fearful height, for the family pride which had been appealed to felt a touch of fear, and his other thoughts were confirmed again, besides the dim vision of a possible thwarting of all his plans. Desire almost concentrated itself upon revenge against the object that threatened them. He had thrown himself again towards the weapons which lay beyond his reach, but was met and forcibly withheld from them.

"Stand back!" said Mr. Carleton. "I said I would, but I am not ready;--finish this business first."

"What is there to finish?" said Thorn furiously;--"you will never live to do anything out of these doors again--you are mocking yourself."

"My life is not in your hands, sir, and I will settle this matter before I put it in peril. If not with you, with Mr. Thorn your father, to whom it more properly belongs."

"You cannot leave the room to see him," said Thorn sneeringly.

"That is at my pleasure," said the other,--"unless hindered by means I do not think you will use."

Thorn was silent.

"Will you yield anything of justice, once more, in favour of this distressed family?"

"That is, yield the whole, and let the guilty go free."

"When the punishment of the offender would involve that of so many unoffending, who in this case would feel it with peculiar severity."

"He deserves it, if it was only for the money he has kept me out of--he ought to be made to refund what he has stolen, if it took the skin off his back!"

"That part of his obligation," said Mr. Carleton, "I am authorized to discharge, on condition of having the note given up. I have a cheque with me which I am commissioned to fill up, from one of the best names here. I need only the date of the note, which the giver of the cheque did not know."

Thorn hesitated, again tapping the table with the ruler in a troubled manner. He knew by the calm erect figure before him and the steady eye he did not care to meet that the threat of disclosure would be kept. He was not prepared to brave it,--in case his revenge should fail;--and if it did not----

"It is deuced folly," he said at length with a half laugh,--"for I shall have it back again in five minutes, if my eye don't play me a trick,--however, if you will have it so--I don't care. There are chances in all things--"

He went again to the cabinets, and presently brought the endorsed note. Mr. Carleton gave it a cool and careful examination, to satisfy himself of its being the true one; and then delivered him the cheque; the blank duly filled up.

"There are chances in nothing, sir," he said, as he proceeded to burn the note effectually in the candle.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that there is a Supreme Disposer of all things, who among the rest has our lives in his hand. And now, sir, I will give you that chance at my life for which you have been so eagerly wishing."

"Well take your place," said Thorn seizing his pistol,--"and take your arms--put yourself at the end of the table----!"

"I shall stand here," said Mr. Carleton, quietly folding his arms;--"you may take your place where you please."

"But you are not armed!" said Thorn impatiently,--"why don't you get ready? what are you waiting for?"

"I have nothing to do with arms," said Mr. Carleton smiling; "I have no wish to hurt you, Mr. Thorn; I bear you no ill-will. But you may do what you please with me."

"But you promised!" said Thorn in desperation.

"I abide by my promise, sir."

Thorn's pistol hand fell; he looked dreadfully. There was a silence of several minutes.

"Well?"--said Mr. Carleton looking up and smiling.

"I can do nothing unless you will," said Thorn hoarsely, and looking hurriedly away.

"I am at your pleasure, sir! But on my own part I have none to gratify."

There was silence again, during which Thorn's face was pitiable in its darkness. He did not stir.

"I did not come here in enmity, Mr. Thorn," said Guy after a little approaching him;--"I have none now. If you believe me you will throw away the remains of yours and take my hand in pledge of it."

Thorn was ashamed and confounded, in the midst of passions that made him at the moment a mere wreck of himself. He inwardly drew back exceedingly from the proposal. But the grace with which the words were said wrought upon all the gentlemanly character that belonged to him, and made it impossible not to comply. The pistol was exchanged for Mr. Carleton's hand.

"I need not assure you," said the latter, "that nothing of what we have talked of to-night shall ever be known or suspected, in any quarter, unless by your means."

Thorn's answer was merely a bow, and Mr. Carleton withdrew, his quondam antagonist lighting him ceremoniously to the door.

It was easy for Mr. Carleton the next morning to deal with his guest at the break fast-table.

The appointments of the service were such as of themselves to put Charlton in a good humour, if he had not come already provided with that happy qualification; and the powers of manner and conversation which his entertainer brought into play not only put them into the background of Capt. Rossitur's perceptions but even made him merge certain other things in fascination, and lose all thought of what probably had called him there. Once before, he had known Mr. Carleton come out in a like manner, but this time he forgot to be surprised.

The meal was two thirds over before the business that had drawn them together was alluded to.

"I made an odd request of you last night, Capt. Rossitur," said his host;--"you haven't asked for an explanation."

"I had forgotten all about it," said Rossitur candidly. "I am inconséquent enough myself not to think everything odd that requires an explanation."

"Then I hope you will pardon me if mine seem to touch upon what is not my concern. You had some cause to be displeased with Mr. Thorn's behaviour last night?"

Who told you as much?--was in Rossitur's open eyes, and upon his tongue; but few ever asked naughty questions of Mr Carleton. Charlton's eyes came back, not indeed to their former dimensions, but to his plate, in silence.

"He was incomprehensible," he said after a minute,--"and didn't act like himself--I don't know what was the matter. I shall call him to account for it."

"Capt. Rossitur, I am going to ask you a favour."

"I will grant it with the greatest pleasure," said Charlton,--"if it lie within my power."

"A wise man's addition," said Mr. Carleton,--"but I trust you will not think me extravagant. I will hold myself much obliged to you if you will let Mr. Thorn's folly, or impertinence, go this time without notice."

Charlton absolutely laid down his knife in astonishment; while at the same moment this slight let to the assertion of his dignity roused it to uncommon pugnaciousness.

"Sir--Mr. Carleton--" he stammered,--"I would be very happy to grant anything in my power,--but this, sir,--really goes beyond it."

"Permit me to say," said Mr. Carleton, "that I have myself seen Thorn upon the business that occasioned his discomposure, and that it has been satisfactorily arranged; so that nothing more is to be gained or desired from a second interview."

Who gave you authority to do any such thing?--was again in Charlton's eyes, and an odd twinge crossed his mind; but as before his thoughts were silent.

"My part of the business cannot have been arranged," he said,--"for it lies in a question or two that I must put to the gentleman myself."

"What will that question or two probably end in?" said Mr. Carleton significantly.

"I can't tell!" said Rossitur,--"depends on himself--it will end according to his answers."

"Is his offence so great that it cannot be forgiven upon my entreaty?"

"Mr. Carleton!" said Rossitur,--"I would gladly pleasure you, sir, but you see, this is a thing a man owes to himself."

"What thing, sir?"

"Why, not to suffer impertinence to be offered him with impunity."

"Even though the punishment extend to hearts at home that must feel it far more heavily than the offender?"

"Would you suffer yourself to be insulted, Mr. Carleton?" said Rossitur, by way of a mouth stopper.

"Not if I could help it," said Mr. Carleton smiling;--"but if such a misfortune happened, I don't know how it would be repaired by being made a matter of life and death."

"But honour might," said Rossitur.

"Honour is not reached, Capt. Rossitur. Honour dwells in a strong citadel, and a squib against the walls does in no wise affect their security."

"But also it is not consistent with honour to sit still and suffer it."

"Question. The firing of a cracker, I think, hardly warrants a sally."

"It calls for chastisement though," said Rossitur a little shortly.

"I don't know that," said Mr. Carleton gravely. "We have it on the highest authority that it is the glory of man to pass by a transgression."

"But you can't go by that," said Charlton a little fidgeted;--"the world wouldn't get along so;--men must take care of themselves."

"Certainly. But what part of themselves is cared for in this resenting of injuries?"

"Why, their good name!"

"As how affected?--pardon me."

"By the world's opinion," said Rossitur,--"which stamps every man with something worse than infamy who cannot protect his own standing."

"That is to say," said Mr. Carleton seriously,--"that Capt. Rossitur will punish a fool's words with death, or visit the last extremity of distress upon those who are dearest to him, rather than leave the world in any doubt of his prowess."

"Mr. Carleton!" said Rossitur colouring. "What do you mean by speaking so, sir?"

"Not to displease you, Capt. Rossitur."

"Then you count the world's opinion for nothing?"

"For less than nothing--compared with the regards I have named."

"You would brave it without scruple?"

"I do not call him a brave man who would not, sir."

"I remember," said Charlton half laughing,--"you did it yourself once; and I must confess I believe nobody thought you lost anything by it."

"But forgive me for asking," said Mr. Carleton,--"is this terrible world a party to this matter? In the request which I made,--and which I have not given up, sir,--do I presume upon any more than the sacrifice of a little private feeling?"

"Why, yes,--" said Charlton looking somewhat puzzled, "for I promised the fellow I would see to it, and I must keep my word."

"And you know how that will of necessity issue."

"I can't consider that, sir; that is a secondary matter. I must do what I told him I would."

"At all hazards?" said Mr. Carleton.

"What hazards?"

"Not hazard, but certainty,--of incurring a reckoning far less easy to deal with."

"What, do you mean with yourself?" said Rossitur.

"No sir," said Mr. Carleton, a shade of even sorrowful expression crossing his face;--"I mean with one whose displeasure is a more weighty matter;--one who has declared very distinctly, 'Thou shalt not kill.'"

"I am sorry for it," said Rossitur after a disturbed pause of some minutes,--"I wish you had asked me anything else; but we can't take this thing in the light you do, sir. I wish Thorn had been in any spot of the world but at Mrs. Decatur's last night, or that Fleda hadn't taken me there; but since he was, there is no help for it,--I must make him account for his behaviour, to her as well as to me. I really don't know how to help it, sir."

"Let me beg you to reconsider that," Mr. Carleton said with a smile which disarmed offence,--"for if you will not help it, I must."

Charlton looked in doubt for a moment and then asked "how he would help it?"

"In that case, I shall think it my duty to have you bound over to keep the peace."

He spoke gravely now, and with that quiet tone which always carries conviction. Charlton stared unmistakably and in silence.

"You are not in earnest?" he then said.

"I trust you will permit me to leave you forever in doubt on that point," said Mr. Carleton, with again a slight giving way of the muscles of his face.

"I cannot indeed," said Rossitur. "Do you mean what you said just now?"

"Entirely."

"But Mr. Carleton," said Rossitur, flushing and not knowing exactly how to take him up,--"is this the manner of one gentleman towards another?"

He had not chosen right, for he received no answer but an absolute quietness which needed no interpretation. Charlton was vexed and confused, but somehow it did not come into his head to pick a quarrel with his host, in spite of his irritation. That was perhaps because he felt it to be impossible.

"I beg your pardon," he said, most unconsciously verifying Fleda's words in his own person,--"but Mr. Carleton, do me the favour to say that I have misunderstood your words. They are incomprehensible to me, sir."

"I must abide by them nevertheless, Capt. Rossitur," Mr. Carleton answered with a smile. "I will not permit this thing to be done, while, as I believe, I have the power to prevent it. You see," he said, smiling again,--"I put in practice my own theory."

Charlton looked exceedingly disturbed, and maintained a vexed and irresolute silence for several minutes, realizing the extreme disagreeableness of having more than his match to deal with.

"Come, Capt. Kossitur," said the other turning suddenly round upon him,--"say that you forgive me what you know was meant in no disrespect to you?"

"I certainly should not," said Rossitur, yielding however with a half laugh, "if it were not for the truth of the proverb that it takes two to make a quarrel."

"Give me your hand upon that. And now that the question of honour is taken out of your hands, grant not to me but to those for whom I ask it, your promise to forgive this man."

Charlton hesitated, but it was difficult to resist the request, backed as it was with weight of character and grace of manner, along with its intrinsic reasonableness; and he saw no other way so expedient of getting out of his dilemma.

"I ought to be angry with somebody," he said, half laughing and a little ashamed;--"if you will point out any substitute for Thorn I will let him go--since I cannot help myself--with pleasure."

"I will bear it," said Mr. Carleton lightly. "Give me your promise for Thorn and hold me your debtor in what amount you please."

"Very well--I forgive him," said Rossitur;--"and now Mr. Carleton I shall have a reckoning with you some day for this."

"I will meet it. When you are next in England you shall come down to---- shire, and I will give you any satisfaction you please."

They parted in high good-humour; but Charlton looked grave as he went down the staircase; and very oddly all the way down to Whitehall his head was running upon the various excellencies and perfections of his cousin Fleda.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter XLVI

There is a fortune coming Towards you, dainty, that will take thee thus, And set thee aloft.

Ben Jonson.

That day was spent by Fleda in the never-failing headache which was sure to visit her after any extraordinary nervous agitation or too great mental or bodily trial. It was severe this time, not only from the anxiety of the preceding night but from the uncertainty that weighed upon her all day long. The person who could have removed the uncertainty came indeed to the house, but she was too ill to see anybody.

The extremity of pain wore itself off with the day, and at evening she was able to leave her room and come down stairs. But she was ill yet, and could do nothing but sit in the corner of the sofa, with her hair unbound, and Florence gently bathing her head with cologne.

Anxiety as well as pain had in some measure given place to exhaustion, and she looked a white embodiment of endurance which gave a shock to her friends' sympathy. Visitors were denied,--and Constance and Edith devoted their eyes and tongues at least to her service, if they could do no more.

It happened that Joe Manton was out of the way, holding an important conference with a brother usher next door, a conference that he had no notion would be so important when he began it; when a ring on his own premises summoned one of the maid-servants to the door. She knew nothing about "not at home," and unceremoniously desired the gentleman to "walk up,"--"the ladies were in the drawing-room."

The door had been set wide open for the heat, and Fleda was close in the corner behind it; gratefully permitting Florence's efforts with the cologne, which yet she knew could avail nothing but the kind feelings of the operator; for herself patiently waiting her enemy's time. Constance was sitting on the floor looking at her.

"I can't conceive how you can bear so much," she said at length.

Fleda thought, how little she knew what was borne!

"Why you could bear it I suppose if you had to," said Edith philosophically.

"She knows she looks most beautiful," said Florence, softly passing her cologned hands down over the smooth hair;--"she knows

"'Il faut souffrir pour être belle.'"

"La migraine ne se guérit avec les douceurs," said Mr. Carleton entering;--"try something sharp, Miss Evelyn."

"Where are we to get it?" said Constance springing up, and adding in a most lack-a-daisical aside to her mother, "(Mamma!--the fowling piece!)--Our last vinegar hardly comes under the appellation; and you don't expect to find anything volatile in this house, Mr. Carleton?"

He smiled.

"Have you none for grave occasions, Miss Constance?"

"I won't retort the question about 'something sharp,'" said Constance arching her eyebrows, "because it is against my principles to make people uncomfortable; but you have certainly brought in some medicine with you, for Miss Ringgan's cheeks a little while ago were as pure as her mind--from a tinge of any sort--and now, you see--"

"My dear Constance," said her mother, "Miss Ringgan's cheeks will stand a much better chance if you come away and leave her in peace. How can she get well with such a chatter in her ears."

"Mr. Carleton and I, mamma, are conferring upon measures of relief,--and Miss Ringgan gives token of improvement already."

"For which I am very little to be thanked," said Mr. Carleton. "But I am not a bringer of bad news, that she should look pale at the sight of me."

"Are you a bringer of any news?" said Constance, "O do let us have them, Mr. Carleton!--I am dying for news--I haven't heard a bit to-day."

"What is the news, Mr. Carleton?" said her mother's voice, from the more distant region of the fire.

"I believe there are no general news, Mrs. Evelyn."

"Are there any particular news?" said Constance.--"I like particular news infinitely the best!"

"I am sorry, Miss Constance, I have none for you. But--will this headache yield to nothing?"

"Fleda prophesied that it would to time," said Florence;--"she Would not let us try much beside."

"And I must confess there has been no volatile agency employed at all," said Constance;--"I never knew time have less of it; and Fleda seemed to prefer him for her physician."

"He hasn't been a good one to-day," said Edith nestling affectionately to her side. "Isn't it better, Fleda?"--for she had covered her eyes with her hand.

"Not just now," said Fleda softly.

"It is fair to change physicians if the first fails," said Mr. Carleton. "I have had a slight experience in headache-curing,--if you will permit me, Miss Constance, I will supersede time and try a different prescription."

He went out to seek it; and Fleda leaned her head in her hand and tried to quiet the throbbing heart every pulsation of which was felt so keenly at the seat of pain. She knew from Mr. Carleton's voice and manner,--she thought she knew,--that he had exceeding good tidings for her; once assured of that she would soon be better; but she was worse now.

"Where is Mr. Carleton gone?" said Mrs. Evelyn.

"I haven't the least idea, mamma--he has ventured upon an extraordinary undertaking and has gone off to qualify himself, I suppose. I can't conceive why he didn't ask Miss Ringgan's permission to change her physician, instead of mine."

"I suppose he knew there was no doubt about that." said Edith, hitting the precise answer of Fleda's thoughts.

"And what should make him think there was any doubt about mine?" said Constance tartly.

"O you know," said her sister, "you are so odd nobody can tell what you will take a fancy to."

"You are--extremely liberal in your expressions, at least, Miss Evelyn,--I must say," said Constance, with a glance of no doubtful meaning.--"Joe--did you let Mr. Carleton in?"

"No, ma'am."

"Well let him in next time; and don't let in anybody else."

Whereafter the party relapsed into silent expectation.

It was not many minutes before Mr. Carleton returned.

"Tell your friend, Miss Constance," he said putting an exquisite little vinaigrette into her hand,--"that I have nothing worse for her than that."

"Worse than this!" said Constance examining it. "Mr. Carleton--I doubt exceedingly whether smelling this will afford Miss Ringgan any benefit."

"Why, Miss Constance?"

"Because--it has made me sick only to look at it!"

"There will be no danger for her," he said smiling.

"Won't there?--Well, Fleda my dear--here, take it," said the young lady;--"I hope you are differently constituted from me, for I feel a sudden pain since I saw it;--but as you keep your eyes shut and so escape the sight of this lovely gold chasing, perhaps it will do you no mischief."

"It will do her all the more good for that," said Mrs. Evelyn.

The only ears that took the benefit of this speech were Edith's and Mr. Carleton's; Fleda's were deafened by the rush of feeling. She very little knew what she was holding. Mr. Carleton stood with rather significant gravity watching the effect of his prescription, while Edith beset her mother to know why the outside of the vinaigrette being of gold should make it do Fleda any more good; the disposing of which question effectually occupied Mrs. Evelyn's attention for some time.

"And pray how long is it since you took up the trade of a physician, Mr. Carleton?" said Constance.

"It is--just about nine years, Miss Constance," he answered gravely.

But that little reminder, slight as it was, overcame the small remnant of Fleda's self-command; the vinaigrette fell from her hands and her face was hid in them; whatever became of pain, tears must flow.

"Forgive me," said Mr. Carleton gently, bending down towards her, "for speaking when I should have been silent.--Miss Evelyn, and Miss Constance, will you permit me to order that my patient be left in quiet."

And he took them away to Mrs. Evelyn's quarter, and kept them all three engaged in conversation, too busily to trouble Fleda with any attention; till she had had ample time to try the effect of the quiet and of the vinegar both. Then he went himself to look after her.

"Are you better?" said he, bending down and speaking low.

Fleda opened her eyes and gave him, what a look!--of grateful feeling. She did not know the half that was in it; but he did. That she was better was a very small item.

"Ready for the coffee?" said he smiling.

"O no," whispered Fleda,--"it don't matter about that--never mind the coffee!"

But he went back with his usual calmness to Mrs. Evelyn and begged that she would have the goodness to order a cup of rather strong coffee to be made.

"But Mr. Carleton, sir," said that lady,--"I am not at all sure that it would be the best thing for Miss Ringgan--if she is better,--I think it would do her far more good to go to rest and let sleep finish her cure, before taking something that will make sleep impossible."

"Did you ever hear of a physician, Mrs. Evelyn," he said smiling, "that allowed his prescriptions to be interfered with? I must beg you will do me this favour."

"I doubt very much whether it will be a favour to Miss Ringgan," said Mrs. Evelyn,--"however--"

And she rang the bell and gave the desired order, with a somewhat disconcerted face. But Mr. Carleton again left Fleda to herself and devoted his attention to the other ladies, with so much success, though with his usual absence of effort, that good humour was served long before the coffee.

Then indeed he played the physician's part again; made the coffee himself and saw it taken, according to his own pleasure; skilfully however seeming all the while, except to Fleda, to be occupied with everything else. The group gathered round her anew; she was well enough to bear their talk by this time; by the time the coffee was drunk quite well.

"Is it quite gone?" asked Edith.

"The headache?--yes."

"You will owe your physician a great many thanks, my dear Fleda," said Mrs. Evelyn.

Fleda's only answer to this, however, was by a very slight smile; and she presently left the room to go up stairs and arrange her yet disarranged hair.

"That is a very fine girl," remarked Mrs. Evelyn, preparing half a cup of coffee for herself in a kind of amused abstraction,--"my friend Mr. Thorn will have an excellent wife of her."

"Provided she marries him," said Constance somewhat shortly.

"I am sure I hope she won't," said Edith,--"and I don't believe she will."

"What do you think of his chances of success, Mr. Carleton?"

"Your manner of speech would seem to imply that they are very good, Mrs. Evelyn," he answered coolly.

"Well don't you think so?" said Mrs. Evelyn, coming back to her seat with her coffee-cup, and apparently dividing her attention between it and her subject,--"It's a great chance for her--most girls in her circumstances would not refuse it--I think he's pretty sure of his ground."

"So I think," said Florence.

"It don't prove anything, if he is," said Constance dryly. "I hate people who are always sure of their ground!"

"What do you think, Mr. Carleton?" said Mrs. Evelyn, taking little satisfied sips of her coffee.

"May I ask, first, what is meant by the 'chance' and what by the 'circumstances.'"

"Why Mr. Thorn has a fine fortune, you know, and he is of an excellent family--there is not a better family in the city--and very few young men of such pretensions would think of a girl that has no name nor standing."

"Unless she had qualities that would command them," said Mr. Carleton.

"But Mr. Carleton, sir," said the lady,--"do you think that can be? do you think a woman can fill gracefully a high place in society if she has had disadvantages in early life to contend with that were calculated to unfit her for it?"

"But mamma," said Constance,--"Fleda don't shew any such thing."

"No, she don't shew it," said Mrs. Evelyn,--"but I am not talking of Fleda--I am talking of the effect of early disadvantages. What do you think, Mr. Carleton?"

"Disadvantages of what kind, Mrs. Evelyn?"

"Why, for instance--the strange habits of intercourse, on familiar terms, with rough and uncultivated people,--such intercourse for years--in all sorts of ways,--in the field and in the house,--mingling with them as one of them--it seems to me it must leave its traces on the mind and on the habits of acting and thinking?"

"There is no doubt it does," he answered with an extremely unconcerned face.

"And then there's the actual want of cultivation," said Mrs. Evelyn, warming;--"time taken up with other things, you know,--usefully and properly, but still taken up,--so as to make much intellectual acquirement and accomplishments impossible; it can't be otherwise, you know,--neither opportunity nor instructors; and I don't think anything can supply the want in after life--it isn't the mere things themselves which may be acquired--the mind should grow up in the atmosphere of them--don't you think so, Mr. Carleton?"

He bowed.

"Music, for instance, and languages, and converse with society, and a great many things, are put completely beyond reach;--Edith, my dear, you are not to touch the coffee,--nor Constance either,--no I will not let you,--And there could not be even much reading, for want of books if for nothing else. Perhaps I am wrong, but I confess I don't see how it is possible in such a case"--

She checked herself suddenly, for Fleda with the slow noiseless step that weakness imposed had come in again and stood by the centre-table.

"We are discussing a knotty question, Miss Ringgan," said Mr. Carleton with a smile, as he brought a bergère for her; "I should like to have your voice on it."

There was no seconding of his motion. He waited till she had seated herself and then went on.

"What in your opinion is the best preparation for wearing prosperity well?"

A glance at Mrs. Evelyn's face which was opposite her, and at one or two others which had undeniably the air of being arrested, was enough for Fleda's quick apprehension. She knew they had been talking of her. Her eyes stopped short of Mr. Carleton's and she coloured and hesitated. No one spoke.

"By prosperity you mean--?"

"Rank and fortune," said Florence, without looking up.

"Marrying a rich man, for instance," said Edith, "and having one's hands full."

This peculiar statement of the case occasioned a laugh all round, but the silence which followed seemed still to wait upon Fleda's reply.

"Am I expected to give a serious answer to that question?" she said a little doubtfully.

"Expectations are not stringent things," said her first questioner smiling. "That waits upon your choice."

"They are horridly stringent, I think," said Constance. "We shall all be disappointed if you don't, Fleda my dear."

"By wearing it 'well' you mean, making a good use of it?"

"And gracefully," said Mrs. Evelyn.

"I think I should say then," said Fleda after some little hesitation and speaking with evident difficulty,--"Such an experience as might teach one both the worth and the worthlessness of money."

Mr. Carleton's smile was a sufficiently satisfied one; but Mrs. Evelyn retorted,

"The worth and the worthlessness!--Fleda my dear, I don't understand--"

"And what experience teaches one the worth and what the worthlessness of money?" said Constance;--"Mamma is morbidly persuaded that I do not understand the first--of the second I have an indefinite idea from never being able to do more than half that I want with it."

Fleda smiled and hesitated again, in a way that shewed she would willingly be excused, but the silence left her no choice but to speak.

"I think," she said modestly, "that a person can hardly understand the true worth of money,--the ends it can best subserve,--that has not been taught it by his own experience of the want; and--"

"What follows?" said Mr. Carleton.

"I was going to say, sir, that there is danger, especially when people have not been accustomed to it, that they will greatly overvalue and misplace the real worth of prosperity; unless the mind has been steadied by another kind of experience, and has learnt to measure things by a higher scale."

"And how when they have been accustomed to it?" said Florence.

"The same danger, without the 'especially'," said Fleda, with a look that disclaimed any assuming.

"One thing is certain," said Constance,--"you hardly ever see les nouveaux riches make a graceful use of anything.--Fleda my dear, I am seconding all of your last speech that I understand. Mamma, I perceive, is at work upon the rest."

"I think we ought all to be at work upon it," said Mrs. Evelyn, "for Miss Ringgan has made it out that there is hardly anybody here that is qualified to wear prosperity well."

"I was just thinking so," said Florence.

Fleda said nothing, and perhaps her colour rose a little.

"I will take lessons of her," said Constance, with eyebrows just raised enough to neutralize the composed gravity of the other features,--"as soon as I have an amount of prosperity that will make it worth while."

"But I don't think," said Florence, "that a graceful use of things is consistent with such a careful valuation and considering of the exact worth of everything--it's not my idea of grace."

"Yet propriety is an essential element of gracefulness, Miss Evelyn."

"Well," said Florence,--"certainly; but what then?"

"Is it attainable, in the use of means, without a nice knowledge of their true value?"

"But, Mr. Carleton, I am sure I have seen improper things--things improper in a way--gracefully done?"

"No doubt; but, Miss Evelyn," said he smiling "the impropriety did not in those cases, I presume, attach itself to the other quality. The graceful manner was strictly proper to its ends, was it not, however the ends might be false?"

"I don't know," said Florence;--"you have gone too deep for me. But do you think that close calculation, and all that sort of thing, is likely to make people use money, or anything else, gracefully? I never thought it did."

"Not close calculation alone," said Mr. Carleton.

"But do you think it is consistent with gracefulness?"

"The largest and grandest views of material things that man has ever taken, Miss Evelyn, stand upon a basis of the closest calculation."

Florence worked at her worsted and looked very dissatisfied.

"O Mr. Carleton," said Constance as he was going,--"don't leave your vinaigrette--there it is on the table."

He made no motion to take it up.

"Don't you know, Miss Constance, that physicians seldom like to have anything to do with their own prescriptions?"

"It's very suspicious of them," said Constance;--"but you must take it, Mr. Carleton, if you please, for I shouldn't like the responsibility of its being left here; and I am afraid it would be dangerous to our peace of mind, besides."

"I shall risk that," he said laughing. "Its work is not done."

"And then, Mr. Carleton," said Mrs. Evelyn, and Fleda knew with what a look,--"you know physicians are accustomed to be paid when their prescriptions are taken."

But the answer to this was only a bow, so expressive in its air of haughty coldness that any further efforts of Mrs. Evelyn's wit were chilled for some minutes after he had gone.

Fleda had not seen this. She had taken up the vinaigrette, and was thinking with acute pleasure that Mr. Carleton's manner last night and to-night had returned to all the familiar kindness of old times. Not as it had been during the rest of her stay in the city. She could be quite contented now to have him go back to England, with this pleasant remembrance left her. She sat turning over the vinaigrette, which to her fancy was covered with hieroglyphics that no one else could read; of her uncle's affair, of Charlton's danger, of her own distress, and the kindness which had wrought its relief, more penetrating and pleasant than even the fine aromatic scent which fairly typified it,--Constance's voice broke in upon her musings.

"Isn't it awkward?" she said as she saw Fleda handling and looking at the pretty toy,--"Isn't it awkward? I sha'n't have a bit of rest now for fear something will happen to that. I hate to have people do such things!"

"Fleda my dear," said Mrs. Evelyn,--"I wouldn't handle it, my love; you may depend there is some charm in it--some mischievous hidden influence,--and if you have much to do with it I am afraid you will find a gradual coldness stealing over you, and a strange forgetfulness of Queechy, and you will perhaps lose your desire ever to go back there any more."

The vinaigrette dropped from Fleda's fingers, but beyond a heightened colour and a little tremulous gravity about the lip, she gave no other sign of emotion.

"Mamma," said Florence laughing,--"you are too bad!"

"Mamma," said Constance, "I wonder how any tender sentiment for you can continue to exist in Fleda's breast!--By the way, Fleda, my dear, do you know that we have heard of two escorts for you? but I only tell you because I know you'll not be fit to travel this age."

"I should not be able to travel to-morrow," said Fleda.

"They are not going to-morrow," said Mrs. Evelyn quietly.

"Who are they?"

"Excellent ones," said Mrs. Evelyn. "One of them is your old friend Mr. Olmney,"

"Mr. Olmney!" said Fleda. "What has brought him to New York?"

"Really," said Mrs. Evelyn laughing,--"I do not know. What should keep him away? I was very glad to see him, for my part. Maybe he has come to take you home."

"Who is the other?" said Fleda.

"That's another old friend of yours--Mrs. Renney."

"Mrs. Renney?--who is she?" said Fleda.

"Why don't you know? Mrs. Renney--she used to live with your aunt Lucy in some capacity--years ago,--when she was in New York,--housekeeper, I think; don't you remember her?"

"Perfectly, now," said Fleda. "Mrs. Renney!--"

"She has been housekeeper for Mrs. Schenck these several years, and she is going somewhere out West to some relation, her brother, I believe, to take care of his family; and her road leads her your way."

"When do they go, Mrs. Evelyn?"

"Both the same day, and both the day after to-morrow. Mr. Olmney takes the morning train, he says, unless you would prefer some other,--I told him you were very anxious to go,--and Mrs. Renney goes in the afternoon. So there's a choice for you."

"Mamma," said Constance, "Fleda is not fit to go at all, either time."

"I don't think she is," said Mrs. Evelyn. "But she knows best what she likes to do."

Thoughts and resolutions came swiftly one after another into Fleda's mind and were decided upon in as quick succession. First, that she must go the day after to-morrow, at all events. Second, that it should not be with Mr. Olmney. Third, that to prevent that, she must not see him in the mean time, and therefore--yes, no help for it,--must refuse to see any one that called the next day; there was to be a party in the evening, so then she would be safe. No doubt Mr. Carleton would come, to give her a more particular account of what he had done, and she wished unspeakably to hear it; but it was not possible that she should make an exception in his favour and admit him alone. That could not be. If friends would only be simple and straightforward and kind,--one could afford to be straightforward too;--but as it was she must not do what she longed to do and they would be sure to misunderstand. There was indeed the morning of the day following left her if Mr. Olmney did not take it into his head to stay. And it might issue in her not seeing Mr. Carleton at all, to bid good-bye and thank him? He would not think her ungrateful, he knew better than that, but still--Well! so much for kindness!--

"What are you looking so grave about?" said Constance.

"Considering ways and means," Fleda said with a slight smile.

"Ways and means of what?"

"Going."

"You don't mean to go the day after to-morrow?"

"Yes."

"It's too absurd for anything! You sha'n't do it."

"I must indeed."

"Mamma," said Constance, "if you permit such a thing, I shall hope that memory will be a fingerboard of remorse to you, pointing to Miss Ringgan's pale cheeks."

"I shall charge it entirely upon Miss Ringgan's own fingerboard," said Mrs. Evelyn, with her complacently amused face. "Fleda, my dear,--shall I request Mr. Olmney to delay his journey for a day or two, my love, till you are stronger?"

"Not at all, Mrs. Evelyn! I shall go then;--if I am not ready in the morning I will take Mrs. Renney in the afternoon--I would quite as lief go with her."

"Then I will make Mr. Olmney keep to his first purpose," said Mrs. Evelyn.

Poor Fleda, though with a very sorrowful heart, kept her resolutions, and for very forlornness and weariness slept away a great part of the next day. Neither would she appear in the evening, for fear of more people than one. It was impossible to tell whether Mrs. Evelyn's love of mischief would not bring Mr. Olmney there, and the Thorns, she knew, were invited. Mr. Lewis would probably absent himself, but Fleda could not endure even the chance of seeing his mother. She wanted to know, but dared not ask, whether Mr. Carleton had been to see her. What if to-morrow morning should pass without her seeing him? Fleda pondered this uncertainty a little, and then jumped out of bed and wrote him the heartiest little note of thanks and remembrance that tears would let her write; sealed it, and carried it herself to the nearest branch of the despatch post the first thing next morning.

She took a long look that same morning at the little vinaigrette which still lay on the centre-table, wishing very much to take it up stairs and pack it away among her things. It was meant for her she knew, and she wanted it as a very pleasant relic from the kind hands that had given it; and besides, he might think it odd if she should slight his intention. But how odd it would seem to him if he knew that the Evelyns had half appropriated it. And appropriate it anew, in another direction, she could not. She could not without their knowledge, and they would put their own absurd construction on what was a simple matter of kindness; she could not brave it.

The morning, a long one it was, had passed away; Fleda had just finished packing her trunk, and was sitting with a faint-hearted feeling of body and mind, trying to rest before being called to her early dinner, when Florence came to tell her it was ready.

"Mr. Carleton was here awhile ago," she said, "and he asked for you; but mamma said you were busy; she knew you had enough to tire you without coming down stairs to see him. He asked when you thought of going."

"What did you tell him?"

"I told him, 'O you were not gone yet!'--it's such a plague to be bidding people good-bye--I always want to get rid of it. Was I right?"

Fleda said nothing, but in her heart she wondered what possible concern it could be of her friends if Mr. Carleton wanted to see her before she went away. She felt it was unkind--they did not know how unkind, for they did not understand that he was a very particular friend and an old friend--they could not tell what reason there was for her wishing to bid him good-bye. She thought she should have liked to do it, very much.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter XLVII

Methought I was--there is no man can tell what. Methought I was, and methought I had,--But man is but a patched fool, if he will offer to say what methought I had.--Midsummer Night's Dream.

Mrs. Evelyn drove down to the boat with Fleda and did not leave her till she was safely put in charge of Mrs. Renney. Fleda immediately retreated to the innermost depths of the ladies' cabin, hoping to find some rest for the body at least if not forgetfulness for the mind.

The latter was not to be. Mrs. Renney was exceeding glad to see her and bent upon knowing what had become of her since those days when they used to know each other.

"You're just the same, Miss Fleda, that you used to be--you're very little altered--I can see that--though you're looking a good deal more thin and pale--you had very pretty roses in your cheeks in those times.--Yes, I know, I understood Mrs. Evelyn to say you had not been well; but allowing for that I can see you are just yourself still--I'm glad of it. Do you recollect, Miss Fleda, what a little thing you was then?"

"I recollect, very well," said Fleda.

"I'm sure of another thing--you're just as good as you used to be," said the housekeeper looking at her complacently. "Do you remember how you used to come into my room to see me make jelly? I see it as well as if it was yesterday;--and you used to beg me to let you squeeze the lemons; and I never could refuse you, because you never did anything I didn't want you to; and do you mind how I used to tie you up in a big towel for fear you would stain your dress with the acid, and I'd stand and watch to see you putting all your strength to squeeze 'em clean, and be afraid that Mrs. Rossitur would be angry with me for letting you spoil your hands, but you used to look up and smile at me so, I couldn't help myself but let you do just whatever you had a mind. You don't look quite so light and bright as you did in those times; but to be sure, you ain't feeling well! See here--just let me pull some of these things onto this settee, and you put yourself down there and rest--pillows--let's have another pillow,--there, how's that?"

Oh if Fleda might have silenced her! She thought it was rather hard that she should have two talkative companions on this journey of all others. The housekeeper paused no longer than to arrange her couch and see her comfortably laid down.

"And then Mr. Hugh would come in to find you and carry you away--he never could bear to be long from you. How is Mr. Hugh, Miss Fleda? he used to be always a very delicate looking child. I remember you and him used to be always together--he was a very sweet boy! I have often said I never saw such another pair of children. How does Mr. Hugh have his health, Miss Fleda?"

"Not very well, just now," said Fleda gently, and shutting her eyes that they might reveal less.

There was need; for the housekeeper went on to ask particularly after every member of the family, and where they had been living, and as much as she conveniently could about how they had been living. She was very kind through it all, or she tried to be; but Fleda felt there was a difference since the time when her aunt kept house in State street and Mrs. Renney made jellies for her. When her neighbours' affairs were exhausted Mrs. Renney fell back upon her own, and gave Fleda a very circumstantial account of the occurrences that were drawing her westward; how so many years ago her brother had married and removed thither; how lately his wife had died; what in general was the character of his wife, and what, in particular, the story of her decease; how many children were left without care, and the state of her brother's business which demanded a great deal; and how finally, she, Mrs. Renney, had received and accepted an invitation to go on to Belle Rivière and be housekeeper de son chef. And as Fleda's pale worn face had for some time given her no sign of attention the housekeeper then hoped she was asleep, and placed herself so as to screen her and have herself a good view of everything that was going on in the cabin.

But poor Fleda was not asleep, much as she rejoiced in being thought so. Mind and body could get no repose, sadly as the condition of both called for it. Too worn to sleep, perhaps;--too down-hearted to rest. She blamed herself for it, and told over to herself the causes, the recent causes, she had of joy and gratitude; but it would not do. Grateful she could be and was; but tears that were not the distillation of joy came with her gratitude; came from under the closed eyelid in spite of her; the pillow was wet with them. She excused herself, or tried to, with thinking that she was weak and not very well, and that her nerves had gone through so much for a few days past it was no wonder if a reaction left her without her usual strength of mind. And she could not help thinking there had been a want of kindness in the Evelyns to let her come away to-day to make such a journey, at such a season, under such guardianship. But it was not all that; she knew it was not. The journey was a small matter; only a little piece of disagreeableness that was well in keeping with her other meditations. She was going home and home had lost all its fair-seeming; its honours were withered. It would be pleasant indeed to be there again to nurse Hugh; but nurse him for what?--life or death?--she did not like to think; and beyond that she could fix upon nothing at all that looked bright in the prospect; she almost thought herself wicked, but she could not. If she might hope that her uncle would take hold of his farm like a man, and redeem his character and his family's happiness on the old place,--that would have been something; but he had declared a different purpose, and Fleda knew him too well to hope that he would be better than his word. Then they must leave the old homestead, where at least the associations of happiness clung, and go to a strange land. It looked desolate to Fleda, wherever it might be. Leave Queechy!--that she loved unspeakably beyond any other place in the world; where the very hills had been the friends of her childhood, and where she had seen the maples grow green and grow red through as many-coloured changes of her own fortunes; the woods where the shade of her grandfather walked with her and where the presence even of her father could be brought back by memory; where the air was sweeter and the sunlight brighter, by far, than in any other place, for both had some strange kindred with the sunny days of long ago. Poor Fleda turned her face from Mrs. Renney, and leaving doubtful prospects and withering comforts for a while as it were out of sight, she wept the fair outlines and the red maples of Queechy as if they had been all she had to regret. They had never disappointed her. Their countenance had comforted her many a time, under many a sorrow. After all, it was only fancy choosing at which shrine the whole offering of sorrow should be made. She knew that many of the tears that fell were due to some other. It was in vain to tell herself they were selfish; mind and body were in no condition to struggle with anything.

It had fallen dark some time, and she had wept and sorrowed herself into a half-dozing state, when a few words spoken near aroused her.

"It is snowing,"--was said by several voices.

"Going very slow, ain't we?" said Fleda's friend in a suppressed voice.

"Yes, 'cause it's so dark, you see; the Captain dursn't let her run."

Some poor witticism followed from a third party about the 'Butterfly's' having run herself off her legs the first time she ever ran at all; and then Mrs. Renney went on.

"Is the storm so bad, Hannah?"

"Pretty thick--can't see far ahead--I hope we'll make out to find our way in--that's all I care for."

"How far are we?"

"Not half way yet--I don't know--depends on what headway we make, you know;--there ain't much wind yet, that's a good thing."

"There ain't any danger, is there?"

This of course the chambermaid denied, and a whispered colloquy followed which Fleda did not try to catch. A new feeling came upon her weary heart,--a feeling of fear. There was a sad twinge of a wish that she were out of the boat and safe back again with the Evelyns, and a fresh sense of the unkindness of letting her come away that afternoon so attended. And then with that sickness of heart the forlorn feeling of being alone, of wanting some one at hand to depend upon, to look to. It is true that in case of real danger none such could be a real protection,--and yet not so neither, for strength and decision can live and make live where a moment's faltering will kill, and weakness must often falter of necessity. "All the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth" to his people; she thought of that, and yet she feared, for his ways are often what we do not like. A few moments of sick-heartedness and trembling,--and then Fleda mentally folded her arms about a few other words of the Bible and laid her head down in quiet again.--"The Lord is my refuge and my fortress; my God; in him will I trust."

And then what comes after,--"He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust; his truth shall be thy shield and buckler."

Fleda lay quiet till she was called to tea.

"Bless me, how pale you are!" said the housekeeper, as Fleda raised herself up at this summons,--"do you feel very bad, Miss Fleda?"

Fleda said no.

"Are you frighted?" said the housekeeper;--"there's no need of that--Hannah says there's no need--we'll be in by and by."

"No, Mrs. Renney," said Fleda smiling. "I believe I am not very strong yet."

The housekeeper and Hannah both looked at her with strangely touched faces, and again begged her to try the refreshment of tea. But Fleda would not go down, so they served her up there with great zeal and tenderness. And then she waited patiently and watched the people in the cabin, as they sat gossiping in groups or stupefying in solitude; and thought how miserable a thing is existence where religion and refinement have not taught the mind to live in somewhat beyond and above its every-day concern.

Late at night the boat arrived safe at Bridgeport. Mrs. Renney and Fleda had resolved to stay on board till morning, when the former promised to take her to the house of a sister she had living in the town; as the cars would not leave the place till near eleven o'clock. Kest was not to be hoped for meantime in the boat, on the miserable couch which was the best the cabin could furnish; but Fleda was so thankful to have finished the voyage in safety that she took thankfully everything else, even lying awake. It was a wild night. The wind rose soon after they reached Bridgeport, and swept furiously over the boat, rattling the tiller chains and making Fleda so nervously alive to possibilities that she got up two or three times to see if the boat were fast to her moorings. It was very dark, and only by a fortunately placed lantern she could see a bit of the dark wharf and one of the posts belonging to it, from which the lantern never budged; so at last, quieted or tired out, nature had her rights, and she slept.

It was not refreshing rest after all, and Fleda was very glad that Mrs. Renney's impatience for something comfortable made her willing to be astir as early as there was any chance of finding people up in the town. Few were abroad when they left the boat, they two. Not a foot had printed the deep layer of snow that covered the wharf. It had fallen thick during the night. Just then it was not snowing; the clouds seemed to have taken a recess, for they hung threatening yet; one uniform leaden canopy was over the whole horizon.

"The snow ain't done yet," said Mrs. Renney.

"No, but the worst of our journey is over," said Fleda. "I am glad to be on the land."

"I hope we'll get something to eat here," said Mrs. Renney as they stepped along over the wharf. "They ought to be ashamed to give people such a mess, when it's just as easy to have things decent. My! how it has snowed. I declare, if I'd ha' known I'd ha' waited till somebody had tracked a path for us. But I guess it's just as well we didn't,--you look as like a ghost as you can, Miss Fleda. You'll be better when you get some breakfast. You'd better catch on to my arm--I'll waken up the seven sleepers but what I'll have something to put life into you directly."

Fleda thanked her but declined the proffered accommodation, and followed her companion in the narrow beaten path a few travellers had made in the street, feeling enough like a ghost, if want of flesh and blood reality were enough. It seemed a dream that she was walking through the grey light and the empty streets of the little town; everything looked and felt so wild and strange.

If it was a dream she was soon waked out of it. In the house where they were presently received and established in sufficient comfort, there was such a little specimen of masculine humanity as never shewed his face in dream land yet; a little bit of reality enough to bring any dreamer to his senses. He seemed to have been brought up on stove heat, for he was ail glowing yet from a very warm bed he had just tumbled out of somewhere, and he looked at the pale thin stranger by his mother's fireplace as if she were an anomaly in the comfortable world. If he could have contented himself with looking!--but he planted himself firmly on the rug just two feet from Fleda, and with a laudable and most persistent desire to examine into the causes of what he could not understand he commenced inquiring,

"Are you cold?--say! Are you cold?--say!"--in a tone most provokingly made up of wonder and dulness. In vain Fleda answered him, that she was not very cold and would soon not be cold at all by that good fire;--the question came again, apparently in all its freshness, from the interrogator's mind,--"Are you cold?--say!--"

And silence and words, looking grave and laughing, were alike thrown away. Fleda shut her eyes at length and used the small remnant of her patience to keep herself quiet till she was called to breakfast. After breakfast she accepted the offer of her hostess to go up stairs and lie down till the cars were ready; and there got some real and much needed refreshment of sleep and rest.

It lasted longer than she bad counted upon. For the cars were not ready at eleven o'clock; the snow last night had occasioned some perplexing delays. It was not till near three o'clock that the often-despatched messenger to the dépôt brought back word that they might go as soon as they pleased. It pleased Mrs. Renney to be in a great hurry, for her baggage was in the cars she said, and it would be dreadful if she and it went different ways; so Fleda and her companion hastened down to the station house and choose their places some time before anybody else thought of coming. They had a long, very tiresome waiting to go through, and room for some uneasy speculations about being belated and a night journey. But Fleda was stronger now, and bore it all with her usual patient submission. At length, by degrees the people dropped in and filled the cars, and they get off.

"How early do you suppose we shall reach Greenfield?" said Fleda.

"Why we ought to get there between nine and ten o'clock, I should think," said her companion. "I hope the snow will hold up till we get there,"

Fleda thought it a hope very unlikely to be fulfilled. There were as yet no snow-flakes to be seen near by, but at a little distance the low clouds seemed already to enshroud every clump of trees and put a mist about every hill. They surely would descend more palpably soon.

It was pleasant to be moving swiftly on again towards the end of their journey, if Fleda could have rid herself of some qualms about the possible storm and the certain darkness; they might not reach Greenfield by ten o'clock; and she disliked travelling in the night at any time. But she could do nothing, and she resigned herself anew to the comfort and trust she had built upon last night. She had the seat next the window, and with a very sober kind of pleasure watched the pretty landscape they were flitting by--misty as her own prospects,--darkening as they?--no, she would not allow that thought. "'Surely I know that it shall be well with them that fear God;' and I can trust him." And she found a strange sweetness in that naked trust and clinging of faith, that faith never tried never knows. But the breath of daylight was already gone, though the universal spread of snow gave the eye a fair range yet, white, white, as far as the view could reach, with that light misty drapery round everything in the distance and merging into the soft grey sky; and every now and then as the wind served, a thick wreath of white vapour came by from the engine and hid all, eddying past the windows and then skimming off away over the snowy ground from which it would not lift; a more palpable veil for a moment of the distant things,--and then broken, scattered, fragmentary, lovely in its frailty and evanishing. It was a pretty afternoon, but a sober; and the bare black solitary trees near hand which the cars flew by, looked to Fleda constantly like finger-posts of the past; and back at their bidding her thoughts and her spirits went, back and forward, comparing, in her own mental view, what had once been so gay and genial with its present bleak and chill condition. And from this, in sudden contrast, came a strangely fair and bright image of Heaven--its exchange of peace for all this turmoil,--of rest for all this weary bearing up of mind and body against the ills that beset both,--of its quiet home for this unstable strange world where nothing is at a stand-still--of perfect and pure society for the unsatisfactory and wearying friendships that the most are here. The thought came to Fleda like one of those unearthly clear Northwestern skies from which a storm cloud has rolled away, that seem almost to mock Earth with their distance from its defilement and agitations. "Truly I know that it shall be well with them that fear God!"--She could remember Hugh,--she could not think of the words without him,--and yet say them with the full bounding assurance. And in that weary and uneasy afternoon her mind rested and delighted itself with two lines of George Herbert, that only a Christian can well understand,--

"Thy power and love,--my love and trust, Make one place everywhere."

But the night fell, and Fleda at last could see nothing but the dim rail fences they were flying by, and the reflection from some stationary lantern on the engine or one of the forward cars, that always threw a bright spot of light on the snow. Still she kept her eyes fastened out of the window; anything but the view inboard. They were going slowly now, and frequently stopping; for they were out of time, and some other trains were to be looked out for. Nervous work; and whenever they stopped the voices which at other times were happily drowned in the rolling of the car-wheels, rose and jarred in discords far less endurable. Fleda shut her ears to the words, but it was easy enough without words to understand the indications of coarse and disagreeable natures in whose neighbourhood she disliked to find herself; of whose neighbourhood she exceedingly disliked to be reminded. The muttered oath, the more than muttered jest, the various laughs that tell so much of head or heart emptiness,--the shadowy but sure tokens of that in human nature which one would not realize and which one strives to forget;--Fleda shrank within herself and would gladly have stopped her ears; did sometimes covertly. Oh if home could be but reached, and she out of this atmosphere! how well she resolved that never another time, by any motive, of delicacy or otherwise, she would be tempted to trust herself in the like again without more than womanly protection. The hours rolled wearily on; they heard nothing of Greenfield yet.

They came at length to a more obstinate stop than usual. Fleda took her hands from her ears to ask what was the matter.

"I don't know," said Mrs. Renney. "I hope they won't keep us a great while waiting here."

The door swung open and the red comforter and tarpaulin hat of one of the brakemen shewed itself a moment. Presently after "Can't get on"--was repeated by several voices in the various tones of assertion, interrogation, and impatience. The women folks, having nobody to ask questions of, had nothing for it but to be quiet and use their ears.

"Can't get on!" said another man coming in,--"there's nothing but snow out o' doors--track's all foul."

A number of people instantly rushed out to see.

"Can't get on any further to-night?" asked a quiet old gentleman of the news-bringer.

"Not another inch, sir;--worse off than old Dobbs was in the mill-pond,--we've got half way but we can't turn and go back."

"And what are we going to do?" said an unhappy wight not quick in drawing conclusions.

"I s'pose we'll all be stiff by the morning," answered the other gravely,--"unless the wood holds out, which ain't likely."

How much there is in even a cheery tone of voice, Fleda was sorry when this man took his away with him. There was a most uncheering confusion of tongues for a few minutes among the people he had left, and then the car was near deserted; everybody went out to bring his own wits to bear upon the obstacles in the way of their progress. Mrs. Renney observed that she might as well warm her feet while she could, and went to the stove for the purpose.

Poor Fleda felt as if she had no heart left. She sat still in her place and leaned her head upon the back of the deserted chair before her, in utter inability to keep it up. The night journey was bad enough, but this was more than she had counted upon. Danger, to be sure, there might be none in standing still there all night, unless perhaps the danger of death from the cold;--she had heard of such things;--but to sit there till morning among all those people and obliged to hear their unloosed tongues,--Fleda felt almost that she could not bear it,--a most forlorn feeling, with which came anew a keen reflection upon the Evelyns for having permitted her to run even the hazard of such trouble. And in the morning, if well it came, who would take care of them in all the subsequent annoyance and difficulty of getting out of the snow?--

It must have taken very little time for these thoughts to run through her head, for half a minute had not flown when the vacant seat beside her was occupied and a hand softly touched one of hers which lay in her lap. Fleda started up in terror,--to have the hand taken and her eye met by Mr. Carleton.

"Mr. Carleton!--O sir, how glad I am to see you!"--was said by eye and cheek as unmistakably as by word.

"Have you come from the clouds?"

"I might rather ask that question of you," said he smiling.

"You have been invisible ever since the night when I had the honour of playing the part of your physician."

"I could not help it, sir,--I was sure you would believe it. I wanted exceedingly to see you and to thank you--as well as I could--but I was obliged to leave it--"

She could hardly say so much. Her swimming eye gave him more thanks than he wanted. But she scolded herself vigorously and after a few minutes was able to look and speak again.

"I hoped you would not think me ungrateful, sir, but in case you might, I wrote to let you know that you were mistaken."

"You wrote to me!" said he.

"Yes, sir--yesterday morning--at least it was put in the post yesterday morning."

"It was more unnecessary than you are aware off," he said with a smile and turning one of his deep looks away from her.

"Are we fast here for all night, Mr. Carleton?" she said presently.

"I am afraid so--I believe so--I have been out to examine and the storm is very thick."

"You need not look so about it for me," said Fleda;--"I don't care for it at all now."

And a long-drawn breath half told how much she had cared for it, and what a burden was gone.

"You look very little like breasting hardships," said Mr. Carleton, bending on her so exactly the look of affectionate care that she had often had from him when she was a child, that Fleda was very near overcome again.

"O you know," she said, speaking by dint of great force upon herself,--"You know the will is everything, and mine is very good--"

But he looked extremely unconvinced and unsatisfied.

"I am so comforted to see you sitting there, sir," Fleda went on gratefully,--"that I am sure I can bear patiently all the rest."

His eye turned away and she did not know what to make of his gravity. But a moment after he looked again and spoke with his usual manner.

"That business you entrusted to me," he said in a lower tone,--"I believe you will have no more trouble with it."

"So I thought!--so I gathered--the other night,--" said Fleda, her heart and her face suddenly full of many things.

"The note was given up--I saw it burned."

Fleda's two hands clasped each other mutely.

"And will he be silent?"

"I think he will choose to be so--for his own sake."

The only sake that would avail in that quarter, Fleda knew. How had Mr. Carleton ever managed it!

"And Charlton?" she said after a few minutes' tearful musing.

"I had the pleasure of Capt. Rossitur's company to breakfast, the next morning,--and I am happy to report that there is no danger of any trouble arising there."

"How shall I ever thank you, sir!" said Fleda with trembling lips.

His smile was so peculiar she almost thought he was going to tell her. But just then Mrs. Renney having accomplished the desirable temperature of her feet, came back to warm her ears, and placed herself on the next seat; happily not the one behind but the one before them, where her eyes were thrown away; and the lines of Mr. Carleton's mouth came back to their usual quiet expression.

"You were in particular haste to reach home?" he asked.

Fleda said no, not in the abstract; it made no difference whether to-day or to-morrow.

"You had heard no ill news of your cousin?"

"Not at all, but it is difficult to find an opportunity of making the journey, and I thought I ought to come yesterday."

He was silent again; and the baffled seekers after ways and means who had gone out to try arguments upon the storm, began to come pouring back into the car. And bringing with them not only their loud and coarse voices with every shade of disagreeableness aggravated by ill-humour, but also an average amount of snow upon their hats and shoulders, the place was soon full of a reeking atmosphere of great coats. Fleda was trying to put up her window, but Mr. Carleton gently stopped her and began bargaining with a neighbouring fellow-traveller for the opening of his.

"Well, sir, I'll open it if you wish it," said the man civilly, "but they say we sha'n't have nothing to make fires with more than an hour or two longer;--so maybe you'll think we can't afford to let any too much cold in."

The gentleman however persisting in his wish and the wish being moreover backed with those arguments to which every grade of human reason is accessible, the window was opened. At first the rush of fresh air was a great relief; but it was not very long before the raw snowy atmosphere which made its way in was felt to be more dangerous, if it was more endurable, than the close pent-up one it displaced. Mr. Carleton ordered the window closed again; and Fleda's glance of meek grateful patience was enough to pay any reasonable man for his share of the suffering. Her share of it was another matter. Perhaps Mr. Carleton thought so, for he immediately bent himself to reward her and to avert the evil, and for that purpose brought into play every talent of manner and conversation that could beguile the time and make her forget what she was among. If success were his reward he had it. He withdrew her attention completely from all that was around her, and without tasking it; she could not have borne that. He did not seem to task himself; but without making any exertion he held her eye and ear and guarded both from communication with things disagreeable. He knew it. There was not a change in her eye's happy interest, till in the course of the conversation Fleda happened to mention Hugh, and he noticed the saddening of the eye immediately afterwards.

"Is he ill?" said Mr. Carleton.

"I don't know," said Fleda faltering a little,--"he was not--very,--but a few weeks ago--"

Her eye explained the broken sentences which there in the neighbourhood of other ears she dared not finish.

"He will be better after he has seen you," said Mr. Carleton gently.

"Yes--"

A very sorrowful and uncertain "yes," with an "if" in the speaker's mind which she did not bring out.

"Can you sing your old song yet,--" said Mr. Carleton softly,--

"'Yet one thing secures us. Whatever betide?'"

But Fleda burst into tears.

"Forgive me," he whispered earnestly,--"for reminding you of that,--you did not need it, and I have only troubled you."

"No sir, you have not," said Fleda,--"it did not trouble me--and Hugh knows it better than I do. I cannot bear anything to-night, I believe--"

"So you have remembered that, Mr. Carleton?" she said a minute after.

"Do you remember that?" said he, putting her old little Bible into her hand.

Fleda seized it, but she could hardly bear the throng of images that started up around it. The smooth worn cover brought so back the childish happy days when it had been her constant companion--the shadows of the Queechy of old, and Cynthia and her grandfather; and the very atmosphere of those times when she had led a light-hearted strange wild life all alone with them, reading the Encyclopædia and hunting out the wood-springs. She opened the book and slowly turned over the leaves where her father's hand had drawn those lines, of remark and affection, round many a passage,--the very look of them she knew; but she could not see it now, for her eyes were dim and tears were dropping fast into her lap,--she hoped Mr. Carleton did not see them, but she could not help it; she could only keep the book out of the way of being blotted. And there were other and later associations she had with it too,--how dear!--how tender!--how grateful!

Mr. Carleton was quite silent for a good while--till the tears had ceased; then he bent towards her so as to be heard no further off.

"It has been for many years my best friend and companion," he said in a low tone.

Fleda could make no answer, even by look.

"At first," he went on softly, "I had a strong association of you with it; but the time came when I lost that entirely, and itself quite swallowed up the thought of the giver."

A quick glance and smile told how well Fleda understood, how heartily she was pleased with that. But she instantly looked away again.

"And now," said Mr. Carleton after a pause,--"for some time past, I have got the association again; and I do not choose to have it so. I have come to the resolution to put the book back into your hands and not receive it again, unless the giver go with the gift."

Fleda looked up, a startled look of wonder, into his face, but the dark eye left no doubt of the meaning of his words; and in unbounded confusion she turned her own and her attention, ostensibly, to the book in her hand, though sight and sense were almost equally out of her power. For a few minutes poor Fleda felt as if all sensation had retreated to her finger-ends. She turned the leaves over and over, as if willing to cheat herself or her companion into the belief that she had something to think of there, while associations and images of the past were gone with a vengeance, swallowed up in a tremendous reality of the present; and the book, which a minute ago was her father's Bible, was now--what was it?--something of Mr. Carleton's which she must give back to him. But still she held it and looked at it--conscious of no one distinct idea but that, and a faint one besides that he might like to be repossessed of his property in some reasonable time--time like everything else was in a whirl; the only steady thing in creation seemed to be that perfectly still and moveless figure by her side--till her trembling fingers admonished her they would not be able to hold anything much longer; and gently and slowly, without looking, her hand put the book back towards Mr. Carleton. That both were detained together she knew but hardly felt;--the thing was that she had given it!--

There was no other answer; and there was no further need that Mr. Carleton should make any efforts for diverting her from the scene and the circumstances where they were. Probably he knew that, for he made none. He was perfectly silent for a long time, and Fleda was deaf to any other voice that could be raised, near or far. She could not even think.

Mrs. Renney was happily snoring, and most of the other people had descended into their coat collars, or figuratively speaking had lowered their blinds, by tilting over their hats in some uncomfortable position that signified sleep; and comparative quiet had blessed the place for some time; as little noticed indeed by Fleda as noise would have been. The sole thing that she clearly recognized in connection with the exterior world was that clasp in which one of her hands lay. She did not know that the car had grown quiet, and that only an occasional grunt of ill-humour, or waking-up colloquy, testified that it was the unwonted domicile of a number of human beings who were harbouring there in a disturbed state of mind. But this state of things could not last. The time came that had been threatened, when their last supply of extrinsic warmth was at an end. Despite shut windows, the darkening of the stove was presently followed by a very sensible and fast-increasing change of temperature; and this addition to their causes of discomfort roused every one of the company from his temporary lethargy. The growl of dissatisfied voices awoke again, more gruff than before; the spirit of jesting had long languished and now died outright, and in its stead came some low and deep and bitter-spoken curses. Poor Mrs. Renney shook off her somnolency and shook her shoulders, a little business shake, admonitory to herself to keep cool; and Fleda came to the consciousness that some very disagreeable chills were making their way over her.

"Are you warm enough?" said Mr. Carleton suddenly, turning to her.

"Not quite," said Fleda hesitating,--"I feel the cold a little. Please don't, Mr. Carleton!--" she added earnestly as she saw him preparing to throw off his cloak, the identical black fox which Constance had described with so much vivacity;--"pray do not! I am not very cold--I can bear a little--I am not so tender as you think me; I do not need it, and you would feel the want very much after wearing it.--I won't put it on."

But he smilingly bade her "stand up," stooping down and taking one of her hands to enforce his words, and giving her at the same time the benefit of one of those looks of good humoured wilfulness to which his mother always yielded, and to which Fleda yielded instantly, though with a colour considerably heightened at the slight touch of peremptoriness in his tone.

"You are not offended with me, Elfie?" he said in another manner, when she had sat down again and he was arranging the heavy folds of the cloak.

Offended!--A glance answered.

"You shall have everything your own way," he whispered gently, as he stooped down to bring the cloak under her feet,--"except yourself."

What good care should be taken of that exception was said in the dark eye at which Fleda hardly ventured half a glance. She had much ado to command herself.

She was shielded again from all the sights and sounds within reach. She was in a maze. The comfort of the fur cloak was curiously mixed with the feeling of something else, of which that was an emblem,--a surrounding of care and strength which would effectually be exerted for her protection,--somewhat that Fleda had not known for many a long day,--the making up of the old want. Fleda had it in her heart to cry like a baby. Such a dash of sunlight had fallen at her feet that she hardly dared look at it for fear of being dazzled; but she could not look anywhere that she did not see the reflection.

In the mean time the earful of people settled again into sullen quietude. The cold was not found propitious to quarrelling. Those who could subsided anew into lethargy, those who could not gathered in their outposts to make the best defence they might of the citadel. Most happily it was not an extreme night; cold enough to be very disagreeable and even (without a fur cloak) dangerous; but not enough to put even noses and ears in immediate jeopardy. Mr. Carleton had contrived to procure a comfortable wrapper for Mrs. Renney from a Yankee who for the sake of being "a warm man" as to his pockets was willing to be cold otherwise for a time. The rest of the great coats and cloaks which were so alert and erect a little while ago were doubled up on every side in all sorts of despondent attitudes. A dull quiet brooded over the assembly; and Mr. Carleton walked up and down the vacant space. Once he caught an anxious glance from Fleda, and came immediately to her side.

"You need not be troubled about me," he said with a most genial smile;--"I am not suffering--never was further from it in my life."

Fleda could neither answer nor look.

"There are not many hours of the night to wear out," he said. "Can't you follow your neighbour's example?"

She shook her head.

"This watching is too hard for you. You will have another headache to-morrow."

"No--perhaps not," she said with a grateful look up.

"You do not feel the cold now, Elfie?"

"Not at all--not in the least--I am perfectly comfortable--I am doing very well--"

He stood still, and the changing lights and shades on Fleda's cheek grew deeper.

"Do you know where we are, Mr. Carleton?"

"Somewhere between a town the name of which I have forgotten and a place called Quarrenton, I think; and Quarrenton, they tell me, is but a few miles from Greenfield. Our difficulties will vanish, I hope, with the darkness."

He walked again, and Fleda mused, and wondered at herself in the black fox. She did not venture another look, though her eye took in nothing very distinctly but the outlines of that figure passing up and down through the car. He walked perseveringly; and weariness at last prevailed over everything else with Fleda; she lost herself with her head leaning against the bit of wood between the windows.

The rousing of the great coats, and the growing gray light, roused her before her uneasy sleep had lasted an hour. The lamps were out, the car was again spotted with two long rows of window-panes, through which the light as yet came but dimly. The morning had dawned at last, and seemed to have brought with it a fresh accession of cold, for everybody was on the stir. Fleda put up her window to get a breath of fresh air and see how the day looked.

A change of weather had come with the dawn. It was not fine yet. The snowing had ceased, but the clouds hung overhead still, though not with the leaden uniformity of yesterday; they were higher and broken into many a soft grey fold, that promised to roll away from the sky by and by. The snow was deep on the ground; every visible thing lapped in a thick white covering; a still, very grave, very pretty winter landscape, but somewhat dreary in its aspect to a trainful of people fixed in the midst of it out of sight of human habitation. Fleda felt that, but only in the abstract; to her it did not seem dreary; she enjoyed the wild solitary beauty of the scene very much, with many a grateful thought of what might have been. As it was, she left difficulties entirely to others.

As soon as it was light the various inmates of the strange dormitory gathered themselves up and set out on foot for Quarrenton. By one of them Mr. Carleton sent an order for a sleigh, which in as short a time as possible arrived, and transported him and Fleda and Mrs. Renney, and one other ill-bestead woman, safely to the little town of Quarrenton.

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Chapter XLVIII

Welcome the sour cup of prosperity! Affliction may one day smile again, and till then, Sit thee down, sorrow!--Love's Labour Lost.

It had been a wild night, and the morning looked scared. Perhaps it was only the particular locality, for if ever a place shewed bleak and winter stricken the little town of Quarrenton was in that condition that morning. The snow overlaid and enveloped everything, except where the wind had been at work; and the wind and the grey clouds seemed the only agencies abroad. Nor a ray of sunlight to relieve the uniform sober tints, the universal grey and white, only varied where a black house-roof, partially cleared, or a blacker bare-branched tree, gave it a sharp interruption. There was not a solitary thing that bore an indication of comfortable life, unless the curls of smoke that went up from the chimneys; and Fleda was in no condition to study their physiognomy.

A little square hotel, perched alone on a rising ground, looked the especial bleak and unpromising spot of the place. It bore however the imposing title of the Pocahontas; and there the sleigh set them down.

They were ushered up-stairs into a little parlour furnished in the usual style, with one or two articles a great deal too showy for the place and a general dearth as to the rest. A lumbering mahogany sofa, that shewed as much wood and as little promise as possible; a marble-topped centre-table; chairs in the minority and curtains minus; and the hearth-rug providently turned bottom upwards. On the centre-table lay a pile of Penny Magazines, a volume of selections of poetry from various good authors, and a sufficient complement of newspapers. The room was rather cold, but of that the waiter gave a reasonable explanation in the fact that the fire had not been burning long.

Furs however might be dispensed with, or Fleda thought so; and taking off her bonnet she endeavoured to rest her weary head against the sharp-cut top of the sofa-back, which seemed contrived expressly to punish and forbid all attempts at ease-seeking. The mere change of position was still comparative ease. But the black fox had not done duty yet. Its ample folds were laid over the sofa, cushion-back and all, so as at once to serve for pillow and mattress, and Fleda being gently placed upon it laid her face down again upon the soft fur, which gave a very kindly welcome not more to the body than to the mind. Fleda almost smiled as she felt that. The furs were something more than a pillow for her cheek--they were the soft image of somewhat for her mind to rest on. But entirely exhausted, too much for smiles or tears, though both were near, she resigned herself as helplessly as an infant to the feeling of rest; and in five minutes was in a state of dreamy unconsciousness.

Mrs. Renney, who had slept a great part of the night, courted sleep anew in the rocking-chair, till breakfast should be ready; the other woman had found quarters in the lower part of the house; and Mr. Carleton stood still with folded arms to read at his leisure the fair face that rested so confidingly upon the black fur of his cloak, looking so very fair in the contrast. It was the same face he had known in time past,--the same, with only an alteration that had added new graces but had taken away none of the old. Not one of the soft outlines had grown hard under Time's discipline; not a curve had lost its grace or its sweet mobility; and yet the hand of Time had been there; for on brow and lip and cheek and eyelid there was that nameless grave composure which said touchingly that hope had long ago clasped hands with submission. And perhaps, that if hope's anchor had not been well placed, ay, even where it could not be moved, the storms of life might have beaten even hope from her ground and made a clean sweep of desolation over all she had left. Not the storms of the last few weeks. Mr. Carleton saw and understood their work in the perfectly colourless and thin cheek. But these other finer drawn characters had taken longer to write. He did not know the instrument, but he read the hand-writing, and came to his own resolutions therefrom.

Yet if not untroubled she had remained unspotted by the world; that was as clear as the other. The slight eyebrow sat with its wonted calm purity of outline just where it used; the eyelid fell as quietly; the forehead above it was as unruffled; and if the mouth had a subdued gravity that it had taken years to teach, it had neither lost any of the sweetness nor any of the simplicity of childhood. It was a strange picture that Mr. Carleton was looking at,--strange for its rareness. In this very matter of simplicity, that the world will never leave those who belong to it. Half sitting and half reclining, she had given herself to rest with the abandonment and self-forgetfulness of a child; her attitude had the very grace of a child's unconsciousness; and her face shewed that even in placing herself there she had lost all thought of any other presence or any other eyes than her own; even of what her hand and cheek lay upon, and what it betokened. It meant something to Mr. Carleton too; and if Fleda could have opened her eyes she would have seen in those that were fixed upon her a happy promise for her future life. She was beyond making any such observations; and Mrs. Renney gave no interruption to his till the breakfast bell rang.

Mr. Carleton had desired the meal to be served in a private room. But he was met with a speech in which such a confusion of arguments endeavoured to persuade him to be of another mind, that he had at last given way. It was asserted that the ladies would have their breakfast a great deal quicker and a great deal hotter with the rest of the company; and in the same breath that it would be a very great favour to the house if the gentleman would not put them to the inconvenience of setting a separate table; the reasons of which inconvenience were set forth in detail, or would have been if the gentleman would have heard them; and desirous especially of haste, on Fleda's account, Mr. Carleton signified his willingness to let the house accommodate itself. Following the bell a waiter now came to announce and conduct them to their breakfast.

Down the stairs, through sundry narrow turning passages, they went to a long low room at one corner of the house; where a table was spread for a very nondescript company, as it soon proved, many of their last night's companions having found their way thither. The two ladies, however, were given the chief posts at the head, as near as possible to a fiery hot stove, and served with tea and coffee from a neighbouring table by a young lady in long ringlets who was there probably for their express honour. But alas for the breakfast! They might as good have had the comfort of a private room, for there was none other to be had. Of the tea and coffee it might be said as once it was said of two bad roads--"whichever one you take you will wish you had taken the other;" the beefsteak was a problem of impracticability; and the chickens--Fleda could not help thinking that a well-to-do rooster which she saw flapping his wings in the yard, must in all probability be at that very moment endeavouring to account for a sudden breach in his social circle; and if the oysters had been some very fine ladies they could hardly have retained less recollection of their original circumstances. It was in vain to try to eat or to drink; and Fleda returned to her sofa with even an increased appetite for rest, the more that her head began to take its revenge for the trials to which it had been put the past day and night.

She had closed her eyes again in her old position. Mrs. Renney was tying her bonnet-strings. Mr. Carleton was pacing up and down.

"Aren't you going to get ready, Miss Ringgan?" said the former.

"How soon will the cars be here?" exclaimed Fleda starting up.

"Presently," said Mr. Carleton; "but," said he, coming up to her and taking her hands,--"I am going to prescribe for you again--will you let me?"

Fleda's face gave small promise of opposition.

"You are not fit to travel now. You need some hours of quiet rest before we go any further."

"But when shall we get home?" said Fleda.

"In good time--not by the railroad--there is a nearer way that will take us to Queechy without going through Greenfield. I have ordered a room to be made ready for you--will you try if it be habitable?"

Fleda submitted; and indeed there was in his manner a sort of gentle determination to which few women would have opposed themselves; besides that her head threatened to make a journey a miserable business.

"You are ill now," said Mr. Carleton. "Cannot you induce your companion to stay and attend you?"

"I don't want her," said Fleda.

Mr. Carleton however mooted the question himself with Mrs. Renney, but she represented to him, though with much deference, that the care of her property must oblige her to go where and when it went. He rang and ordered the housekeeper to be sent.

Presently after a young lady in ringlets entered the room, and first taking a somewhat leisurely survey of the company, walked to the window and stood there looking out. A dim recollection of her figure and air made Fleda query whether she were not the person sent for; but it was several minutes before it came into Mr. Carleton's head to ask if she belonged to the house.

"I do, sir," was the dignified answer.

"Will you shew this lady the room prepared for her? And take care that she wants nothing."

The owner of the ringlets answered not, but turning the front view of them full upon Fleda seemed to intimate that she was ready to act as her guide. She hinted however that the rooms were very airy in winter and that Fleda would stand a better chance of comfort where she was. But this Fleda would not listen to, and followed her adviser to the half warmed and certainly very airy apartment which had been got ready for her. It was probably more owing to something in her own appearance than to Mr. Carleton's word of admonition on the subject that her attendant was really assiduous and kind.

"Be you of this country?" she said abruptly, after her good offices as Fleda thought were ended, and she had just closed her eyes.

She opened them again and said "yes."

"Well, that ain't in the parlour, is he?"

"What?" said Fleda.

"One of our folks?"

"An American, you mean?--No."

"I thought he wa'n't--What is he?"

"He is English."

"Is he your brother?"

"No."

The young lady gave her a good look out of her large dark eyes, and remarking that "she thought they didn't look much like," left the room.

The day was spent by poor Fleda between pain and stupor, each of which acted in some measure to check the other; too much exhausted for nervous pain to reach the height it sometimes did, while yet that was sufficient to prevent stupor from sinking into sleep. Beyond any power of thought or even fancy, with only a dreamy succession of images flitting across her mind, the hours passed she knew not how; that they did pass she knew from her handmaid in the long curls who was every now and then coming in to look at her and give her fresh water; it needed no ice. Her handmaid told her that the cars were gone by--that it was near noon--then that it was past noon. There was no help for it; she could only lie still and wait; it was long past noon before she was able to move; and she was looking ill enough yet when she at last opened the door of the parlour and slowly presented herself.

Mr. Carleton was there alone, Mrs. Renney having long since accompanied her baggage. He came forward instantly and led Fleda to the sofa, with such gentle grave kindness that she could hardly bear it; her nerves had been in an unsteady state all day. A table was set and partially spread with evidently much more care than the one of the morning; and Fleda sat looking at it afraid to trust herself to look anywhere else. For years she had been taking care of others; and now there was something so strange in this feeling of being cared for, that her heart was full. Whatever Mr. Carleton saw or suspected of this, it did not appear. On the contrary his manner and his talk on different matters was as cool, as quiet, as graceful, as if neither he nor Fleda had anything particular to think of; avoiding even an allusion to whatever might in the least distress her. Fleda thought she had a great many reasons to be grateful to him, but she never thanked him for anything more than at that moment she thanked him for the delicacy which so regarded her delicacy and put her in a few minutes completely at her ease as she could be.

The refreshments were presently brought, and Fleda was served with them in a way that went as far as possible towards making them satisfactory; but though a great improvement upon the morning they furnished still but the substitute for a meal. There was a little pause then after the horses were ordered.

"I am afraid you have wanted my former prescription to-day," said Mr. Carleton, after considering the little-improved colour of Fleda's face.

"I have indeed."

"Where is it?"

Fleda hesitated, and then in a little confusion said she supposed it was lying on Mrs. Evelyn's centre-table.

"How happens that?" said he smiling.

"Because--I could not help it, Mr. Carleton," said Fleda with no little difficulty;--"I was foolish--I could not bring it away."

He understood and was silent.

"Are you fit to bear a long ride in the cold?" he said compassionately a few minutes after.

"Oh yes!--It will do me good."

"You have had a miserable day, have you not?"

"My head has been pretty bad,--" said Fleda a little evasively.

"Well, what would you have?" said he lightly;--"doesn't that make a miserable day of it?"

Fleda hesitated and coloured,--and then conscious that her cheeks were answering for her, coloured so exceedingly that she was fain to put both her hands up to hide what they only served the more plainly to shew. No advantage was taken. Mr. Carleton said nothing; she could not see what answer might be in his face. It was only by a peculiar quietness in his tone whenever he spoke to her afterwards that Fleda knew she had been thoroughly understood. She dared not lift her eyes.

They had soon employment enough around her. A sleigh and horses better than anything else Quarrenton had been known to furnish, were carrying her rapidly towards home; the weather had perfectly cleared off, and in full brightness and fairness the sun was shining upon a brilliant world. It was cold indeed, though the only wind was that made by their progress; but Fleda had been again unresistingly wrapped in the furs and was for the time beyond the reach of that or any other annoyance. She eat silently and quietly enjoying; so quietly that a stranger might have questioned there being any enjoyment in the case. It was a very picturesque broken country, fresh-covered with snow; and at that hour, late in the day, the lights and shadows were a constantly varying charm to the eye. Clumps of evergreens stood out in full disclosure against the white ground; the bare branches of neighbouring trees, in all their barrenness, had a wild prospective or retrospective beauty peculiar to themselves. On the wavy white surface of the meadow-land, or the steep hill-sides, lay every variety of shadow in blue and neutral tint; where they lay not the snow was too brilliant to be borne. And afar off, through a heaven bright and cold enough to hold the canopy over Winter's head, the ruler of the day was gently preparing to say good-bye to the world. Fleda's eye seemed to be new set for all forms of beauty, and roved from one to the other, as grave and bright as nature itself.

For a little way Mr. Carleton left her to her musings and was as silent as she. But then he gently drew her into a conversation that broke up the settled gravity of her face and obliged her to divide her attention between nature and him, and his part of it he knew how to manage. But though eye and smile constantly answered him he could win neither to a straightforward bearing.

They were about a mile from Queechy when Pleda suddenly exclaimed,

"O Mr. Carleton, please stop the sleigh I--"

The horses were stopped.

"It is only Earl Douglass--our farmer," Fleda said in explanation,--"I want to ask how they are at home."

In answer to her nod of recognition Mr. Douglass came to the side of the vehicle; but till he was there, close, gave her no other answer by word or sign; when there, broke forth his accustomed guttural,

"How d'ye do!"

"How d'ye do, Mr. Douglass," said Fleda. "How are they all at home?"

"Well, there ain't nothin' new among 'em, as I've heerd on," said Earl, diligently though stealthily at the same time qualifying himself to make a report of Mr. Carleton,--"I guess they'll be glad to see you. I be."

"Thank you, Mr. Douglass. How is Hugh?"

"He ain't nothin' different from what he's been for a spell back--at least I ain't heerd that he was.--Maybe he is, but if he is I han't heerd speak of it, and if he was, I think I should ha' heerd speak of it. He was pretty bad a spell ago--about when you went away--but he's been better sen. So they say. I ha'n't seen him.--Well Flidda," he added with somewhat of a sly gleam in his eye,--"do you think you're going to make up your mind to stay to hum this time?"

"I have no immediate intention of running away, Mr. Douglass," said Fleda, her pale cheeks turning rose as she saw him looking curiously up and down the edges of the black fox. His eye came back to hers with a good-humoured intelligence that she could hardly stand.

"It's time you was back," said he. "Your uncle's to hum,--but he don't do me much good, whatever he does to other folks--nor himself nother, as far as the farm goes; there's that corn"--

"Very well, Mr. Douglass," said Fleda,--"I shall be at home now and I'll see about it."

"Very good!" said Earl as he stepped back,--"Queechy can't get along without you, that's no mistake."

They drove on a few minutes in silence.

"Aren't you thinking, Mr. Carleton," said Fleda, "that my countrymen are a strange mixture?"

"I was not thinking of them at all at this moment. I believe such a notion has crossed my mind."

"It has crossed mine very often," said Fleda.

"How do you read them? what is the basis of it?"

"I think,--the strong self-respect which springs from the security and importance that republican institutions give every man. But," she added colouring, "I have seen very little of the world and ought not to judge."

"I have no doubt you are quite right," said Mr. Carleton smiling. "But don't you think an equal degree of self-respect may consist with giving honour where honour is due?"

"Yes--" said Fleda a little doubtfully,--"where religion and not republicanism is the spring of it."

"Humility and not pride," said he. "Yes--you are right."

"My countrymen do yield honour where they think it is due," said Fleda; "especially where it is not claimed. They must give it to reality, not to pretension. And I confess I would rather see them a little rude in their independence than cringing before mere advantages of external position;--even for my own personal pleasure."

"I agree with you, Elfie,--putting perhaps the last clause out of the question."

"Now that man," said Fleda, smiling at his look,--"I suppose his address must have struck you as very strange; and yet there was no want of respect under it. I am sure he has a true thorough respect and even regard for me, and would prove it on any occasion."

"I have no doubt of that."

"But it does not satisfy you?"

"Not quite. I confess I should require more from any one under my control."

"Oh nobody is under control here," said Fleda. "That is, I mean, individual control. Unless so far as self-interest comes in. I suppose that is all-powerful here as elsewhere."

"And the reason it gives less power to individuals is that the greater freedom of resources makes no man's interest depend so absolutely on one other man. That is a reason you cannot regret. No--your countrymen have the best of it, Elfie. But do you suppose that this is a fair sample of the whole country?"

"I dare not say that," said Fleda. "I am afraid there is not so much intelligence and cultivation everywhere. But I am sure there are many parts of the land that will bear a fair comparison with it."

"It is more than I would dare say for my own land."

"I should think--" Fleda suddenly stopped.

"What?--" said Mr. Carleton gently.

"I beg your pardon, sir,--I was going to say something very presumptuous."

"You cannot," he said in the same tone.

"I was going to say," said Fleda blushing, "that I should think there might be a great deal of pleasure in raising the tone of mind and character among the people,--as one could who had influence over a large neighbourhood."

His smile was very bright in answer.

"I have been trying that, Elfie, for the last eight years."

Fleda's eye looked now eagerly in pleasure and in curiosity for more. But he was silent.

"I was thinking a little while ago," he said, "of the time once before when I rode here with you--when you were beginning to lead me to the problem I have been trying to work out ever since.--When I left you in Paris I went to resolve with myself the question, What I had to do in the world?--Your little Bible was my invaluable help. I had read very little of it when I threw aside all other books; and my problem was soon solved. I saw that the life has no honour nor value which is not spent to the glory of God. I saw the end I was made for--the happiness I was fitted for--the dignity to which even a fallen creature may rise, through his dear Redeemer and surety."

Fleda's eyes were down now. Mr. Carleton was silent a moment, watching one or two bright witnesses that fell from them.

"The next conclusion was easy,--that my work was at home.--I have wanted my good fairy," Mr. Carleton went on smiling. "But I hope she will be contented to carry the standard of Christianity, without that of republicanism."

"But Christianity tends directly to republicanism, Mr. Carleton," said Fleda, trying to laugh.

"I know that," said he smiling, "and I am willing to know it. But the leaven of truth is one thing, and the powder train of the innovator is another."

Fleda sat thinking that she had very little in common with the layers of powder trains. She did not know the sleigh was passing Deepwater Lake, till Mr. Carleton said,--

"I am glad, my dear Elfie, for your sake, that we are almost at the end of your journey."

"I should think you might be glad for your own sake, Mr. Carleton."

"No--my journey is not ended--"

"Not?"

"No--it will not be ended till I get back to New York, or rather till I find myself here again--I shall make very little delay there--"

"But you will not go any further to-night?" said Fleda, her eye this time meeting his fully.

"Yes--I must take the first train to New York. I have some reason to expect my mother by this steamer."

"Back to New York!" said Fleda. "Then taking care of me has just hindered you in your business."

But even as she spoke she read the truth in his eye and her own fell in confusion.

"My business?" said he smiling;--"you know it now, Elfie. I arrived at Mrs. Evelyn's just after you had quitted it, intending to ask you to take the long talked of drive; and learned to my astonishment that you had left the city, and as Edith kindly informed me, under no better guardianship than that in which I found you. I was just in time to reach the boat."

"And you were in the boat night before last?"

"Certainly."

"I should have felt a great deal easier if I had known that," said Fleda.

"So should I," said he, "but you were invisible, till I discerned you in the midst of a crowd of people before me in the car."

Fleda was silent till the sleigh stopped and Mr. Carleton had handed her out.

"What's going to be done

"I will send somebody down to help you with it," said Fleda. "It is too heavy for one alone."

"Well I reckon it is," said he. "I guess you didn't know I was a cousin, did you?"

"No," said Fleda.

"I believe I be."

"Who are you?"

"I am Pierson Barnes. I live to Quarrenton for a year back. Squire Joshua Springer's your uncle, ain't he?"

"Yes, my father's uncle."

"Well he's mine too. His sister's my mother."

"I'll send somebody to help you, Mr. Barnes."

She took Mr. Carleton's arm and walked half the way up to the house without daring to look at him.

"Another specimen of your countrymen," he said smiling.

There was nothing but quiet amusement in the tone, and there was not the shadow of anything else in his face. Fleda looked, and thanked him mentally, and drew breath easier. At the house door he made a pause.

"You are coming in, Mr. Carleton?"

"Not now."

"It is a long drive to Greenfield, Mr. Carleton;--you must not turn away from a country house till we have shewn ourselves unworthy to live in it. You will come in and let us give you something more substantial than those Quarrenton oysters. Do not say no," she said earnestly as she saw a refusal in his eye,--"I know what you are thinking of, but they do not know that you have been told anything--it makes no difference."

She laid her gentle detaining hand, as irresistible in its way as most things, upon his arm, and he followed her in.

Only Hugh was in the sitting-room, and he was in a great easy-chair by the fire. It struck to Fleda's heart; but there was no time but for a flash of thought. He had turned his face and saw her. Fleda meant to have controlled herself and presented Mr. Carleton properly, but Hugh started up, he saw nothing but herself, and one view of the ethereal delicacy of his face made Fleda for a moment forget everything but him. They were in each other's arms, and then still as death. Hugh was unconscious that a stranger was there, and though Fleda was very conscious that one was there who was no stranger,--there was so much in both hearts, so much of sorrow and joy, and gratitude and tenderness, on the one part and on the other, so much that even if they had been alone lips could only have said silently,--that for a little while they kissed each other and wept in a passionate attempt to speak what their hearts were too full of.

Fleda at last whispered to Hugh that somebody else was there and turned to make as well as she might the introduction. But Mr. Carleton did not need it, and made his own with that singular talent which in all circumstances, wherever he chose to exert it, had absolute power. Fleda saw Hugh's countenance change, with a kind of pleased surprise, and herself stood still under the charm for a minute; then she recollected she might be dispensed with. She took up her little spaniel who was in an agony of gratulation at her feet, and went out into the kitchen.

"Well do you mean to say you are here at last?" said Barby, her grey eyes flashing pleasure as she came forward to take the half hand which, owing to King's monopoly, was all Fleda had to give her. "Have you come home to stay, Fleda?"

"I am tired enough to be quiet," said Fleda. "But dear Barby, what have you got in the house?--I want supper as quickly as it can be had."

"Well you do look dreadful bad," said Barby eying her. "Why there ain't much particular, Fleda; nobody's had any heart to eat lately; I thought I might a'most as well save myself the fuss of getting victuals. Hugh lives like a bird, and Mis' Rossitur ain't much better, and I think all of 'em have been keeping their appetites till you came back; 'cept Philetus and me; we keep it up pretty well. Why you're come home hungry, ain't you?"

"No, not I," said Fleda, "but there's a gentleman here that came with me that must have something before he goes away again. What have you Barby?"

"Who is he?" said Barby.

"A friend that took care of me on the way--I'll tell you about it,--but in the mean time, supper, Barby."

"Is he a New Yorker, that one must be curious for?"

"As curious as you like," said Fleda, "but he is not a New Yorker."

"Where is he from, then?" said Barby, who was busily putting on the tea-kettle.

"England."

"England!" said Barby facing about. "Oh if he's an Englishman I don't care for him, Fleda."

"But you care for me," said Fleda laughing; "and for my sake don't let our hospitality fail to somebody who has been very kind to me, if he is an Englishman; and he is in haste to be off."

"Well I don't know what we're a going to give him," said Barby looking at her. "There ain't much in the pantry besides cold pork and beans that Philetus and me made our dinner on--they wouldn't have it in there, and eat nothing but some pickerel the doctor sent down--and cold fish ain't good for much."

"None of them left uncooked?"

"Yes, there's a couple--he sent a great lot--I guess he thought there was more in the family--but two ain't enough to go round; they're little ones."

"No, but put them down and I'll make an omelette. Just get the things ready for me, Barby, will you, while I run up to see aunt Lucy. The hens have begun to lay?"

"La yes--Philetus fetches in lots of eggs--he loves 'em, I reckon--but you ain't fit this minute to do a thing but rest, Fleda."

"I'll rest afterwards. Just get the things ready for me, Barby, and an apron; and the table--I'll be down in a minute. And Barby, grind some coffee, will you?"

But as she turned to run up stairs, her uncle stood in her way, and the supper vanished from Fleda's head. His arms were open and she was silently clasped in them, with so much feeling on both sides that thought and well nigh strength for anything else on her part was gone. His smothered words of deep blessing overcame her. Fleda could do nothing but sob, in distress, till she recollected Barby. Putting her arms round his neck then she whispered to him that Mr. Carleton was in the other room and shortly explained how he came to be there, and begged her uncle would go in and see him till supper should be ready. Enforcing this request with a parting kiss on his cheek, she ran off up stairs. Mr. Rossitur looked extremely moody and cloudy for a few minutes, and then went in and joined his guest. Mrs. Rossitur and her daughter could not be induced to shew themselves.

Little Rolf, however, had no scruples of any kind. He presently edged himself into the room to see the stranger whom he no sooner saw than with a joyous exclamation he bounded forward to claim an old friend.

"Why, Mr. Carleton," exclaimed Mr. Rossitur in surprise, "I was not aware that this young gentleman had the honour of your acquaintance."

"But I have!" said Rolf.

"In London, sir, I had that pleasure," said Mr. Carleton.

"I think it was I had the pleasure," said Rolf, pounding one hand upon Mr. Carleton's knee.

"Where is your mother?"

"She wouldn't come down," said Rolf,--"but I guess she will when she knows who is here--"

And he was darting away to tell her, when Mr. Carleton, within whose arms he stood, quietly restrained him, and told him he was going away presently, but would come again and see his mother another time.

"Are you going back to England, sir?"

"By and by."

"But you will come here again first?"

"Yes--if Mr. Rossitur will let me."

"Mr. Carleton knows he commands his own welcome," said that gentleman somewhat stately. "Go and tell your aunt Fleda that tea is ready, Rolf."

"She knows," said Rolf. "She was making an omelette--I guess it was for this gentleman!"

Whose name he was not clear of yet. Mr. Rossitur looked vexed, but Hugh laughed and asked if his aunt gave him leave to tell that. Rolf entered forthwith into discussion on this subject, while Mr. Carleton who had not seemed to hear it engaged Mr. Rossitur busily in another; till the omelette and Fleda came in. Rolf's mind however was ill at ease.

"Aunt Fleda," said he, as soon as she had fairly taken her place at the head of the table, "would you mind my telling that you made the omelette for this gentleman?"

Fleda cast a confused glance first at the person in question and then round the table, but Mr. Carleton without looking at her answered instantly,

"Don't you understand, Rolf, that the same kindness which will do a favour for a friend will keep him in ignorance of it?"

Rolf pondered a moment and then burst forth,

"Why, sir, wouldn't you like it as well for knowing she made it?"

It was hardly in human gravity to stand this. Fleda herself laughed, but Mr. Carleton as unmoved as possible answered him, "Certainly not!"--and Rolf was nonplussed.

The supper was over. Hugh had left the room, and Mr. Rossitur had before that gone out to give directions about Mr. Carleton's horses. He and Fleda were left alone.

"I have something against you, fairy," said he lightly, taking her hand and putting it to his lips. "You shall not again do me such honour as you have done me to-day--I did not deserve it, Elfie."

The last words were spoken half reproachfully. Fleda stood a moment motionless, and then by some curious revulsion of feeling put both her hands to her face and burst into tears.

She struggled against them, and spoke almost immediately,

"You will think me very foolish, Mr. Carleton,--I am ashamed of myself--but I have lived here so long in this way,--my spirits have grown so quieted by different things,--that it seems sometimes as if I could not bear anything.--I am afraid--"

"Of what, my dear Elfie?"

But she did not answer, and her tears came again.

"You are weary and spent," he said gently, repossessing himself of one of her hands. "I will ask you another time what you are afraid of, and rebuke all your fears."

"I deserve nothing but rebuke now," said Fleda.

But her hand knew, by the gentle and quiet clasp in which it lay, that there was no disposition to give it.

"Do not speak to me for a minute," she said hastily as she heard some one coming.

She went to the window and stood there looking out till Mr. Carleton came to bid her good-bye.

"Will you permit me to say to Mrs. Evelyn," he said in a low tone, "that you left a piece of your property in her house and have commissioned me to bring it you?"

"Yes--" said Fleda, hesitating and looking a little confused,--"but--will you let me write a note instead, Mr. Carleton?"

"Certainly!--but what are you thinking of, Elfie? what grave doubt is lying under your brow?"

All Fleda's shadows rolled away before that clear bright eye.

"I have found by experience," she said, smiling a little but looking down,--"that whenever I tell my secret thoughts to anybody I have some reason afterwards to be sorry for it."

"You shall make me an exception to your rule, however, Elfie."

Fleda looked up, one of her looks half questioning, half fearing, and then answered, a little hesitating,

"I was afraid, sir, that if you went to Mrs. Evelyn's on that errand--I was afraid you would shew them you were displeased."

"And what then?" said he quietly.

"Only--that I wanted to spare them what always gives me a cold chill."

"Gives you!" said Mr. Carleton.

"No sir--only by sympathy--I thought my agency would be the gentlest."

"I see I was right," she said, looking up as he did not answer,--"they don't deserve it,--not half so much as you think. They talk--they don't know what. I am sure they never meant half they said--never meant to annoy me with it, I mean,--and I am sure they have a true love for me; they have shewn it in a great many ways. Constance especially never shewed me anything else. They have been very kind to me; and as to letting me come away as they did, I suppose they thought I was in a greater hurry to get home than I really was--and they would very likely not have minded travelling so themselves; I am so different from them that they might in many things judge me by themselves and yet judge far wrong."

Fleda was going on, but she suddenly became aware that the eye to which she was speaking had ceased to look at the Evelyns, even in imagination, and she stopped short.

"Will you trust me, after this, to see Mrs. Evelyn without the note?" said he smiling.

But Fleda gave him her hand very demurely without raising her eyes again, and he went.

Barby who had come in to clear away the table took her stand at the window to watch Mr. Carleton drive off. Fleda had retreated to the fire. Barby looked in silence till the sleigh was out of sight.

"Is he going back to England now?" she said coming back to the table.

"No."

Barby gathered a pile of plates together and then enquired,

"Is he going to settle in America?"

"Why no, Barby! What makes you ask such a thing?"

"I thought he looked as if he had dressed himself for a cold climate," said Barby dryly.

Fleda sat down by Hugh's easy-chair and laid her head on his breast.

"I like your Mr. Carleton very much," Hugh whispered after awhile.

"Do you?" said Fleda, a little wondering at Hugh's choice of that particular pronominal adjective.

"Very much indeed. But he has changed, Fleda?"

"Yes--in some things--some great things."

"He says he is coming again," said Hugh.

Fleda's heart beat. She was silent.

"I am very glad," repeated Hugh, "I like him very much. But you won't leave me, Fleda,--will you?"

"Leave you?" said Fleda looking at him.

"Yes," said Hugh smiling, and drawing her head down again;--I always thought what he came over here for. But you will stay with me while I want you, Fleda?"

"While you want me!" said Fleda again.

"Yes.--It won't be long."

"What won't be long?"

"I," said Hugh quietly. "Not long. I am very glad I shall not leave you alone, dear Fleda--very glad!--promise me you will not leave me any more."

"Don't talk so, dear Hugh!"

"But it is true, Fleda," said Hugh gently. "I know it. I sha'n't be here but a little while. I am so glad you are come home, dear Fleda!--You will not let anybody take you away till I am gone first?"

Fleda drew her arm close around Hugh's neck and was still,--still even to his ear,--for a good while. A hard battle must be fought, and she must not be weak, for his sake and for everybody's sake. Others of the family had come or were coming into the room. Hugh waited till a short breath, but freer drawn, told him he might speak.

"Fleda--" he whispered.

"What?"

"I am very happy.--I only want your promise about that."

"I can't talk to you, Hugh."

"No, but promise me."

"What?"

"That you will not let anybody take you away while I want you."

"I am sure he would not ask it," said Fleda, hiding her cheeks and eyes at once in his breast.

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