kindness and affection, she had amusement, interest,
and improvement; in Hugh everything;—love,
confidence, sympathy, society, help; their tastes,
opinions, pursuits, went hand in hand. The two
children were always together. Fleda’s spirits
were brighter than Hugh’s, and her intellectual
tastes stronger and more universal. That might
be as much from difference of physical as of mental
constitution. Hugh’s temperament led him
somewhat to melancholy, and to those studies and pleasures
which best side with subdued feeling and delicate nerves.
Fleda’s nervous system was of the finest too,
but, in short, she was as like a bird as possible.
Perfect health, which yet a slight thing was enough
to shake to the foundation;—joyous spirits,
which a look could quell;—happy energies,
which a harsh hand might easily crush for ever.
Well for little Fleda that so tender a plant was permitted
to unfold in so nicely tempered an atmosphere.
A cold wind would soon have killed it. Besides
all this there were charming studies to be gone through
every day with Hugh; some for aunt Lucy to hear, some
for masters and mistresses. There were amusing
walks in the Boulevards, and delicious pleasure taking
in the gardens of Paris, and a new world of people
and manners and things and histories for the little
American. And despite her early rustic experience
Fleda had from nature an indefeasible taste for the
elegancies of life; it suited her well to see all
about her, in dress, in furniture, in various appliances,
as commodious and tasteful as wealth and refinement
could contrive it; and she very soon knew what was
right in each kind. There were now and then most
gleeful excursions in the environs of Paris, when
she and Hugh found in earth and air a world of delights
more than they could tell anybody but each other.
And at home, what peaceful times they two had,—what
endless conversations, discussions, schemes, air-journeys
of memory and fancy, backward and forward; what sociable
dinners alone, and delightful evenings with Mr.
and
Mrs. Rossitur in the saloon when nobody or only a
very few people were there; how pleasantly in those
evenings the foundations were laid of a strong and
enduring love for the works of art, painted, sculptured,
or engraven, what a multitude of curious and excellent
bits of knowledge Fleda’s ears picked up from
the talk of different people. They were capital
ears; what they caught they never let fall. In
the course of the year her gleanings amounted to more
than many another person’s harvest.
Chapter XIV.
Heav’n bless thee;
Thou hast the sweetest face I ever look’d
on.
