It was impossible to help laughing at the distressful
position of the young lady’s eyebrows, and with
at least some measure of outward grace Mr. Thorn set
about complying with her request. Fleda again
stood tapping her left hand with her flowers, wondering
a little that somebody else did not come and speak
to her; but he was talking to Mrs. Evelyn and Mr.
Stackpole. Fleda did not wish to join them, and
nothing better occurred to her than to arrange her
flowers over again; so throwing them all down before
her on a marble slab, she began to pick them up one
by one and put them together, with it must be confessed
a very indistinct realization of the difference between
myrtle and lemon blossoms, and as she seemed to be
laying acacia to rose, and disposing some sprigs of
beautiful heath behind them, in reality she was laying
kindness alongside of kindness and looking at the
years beyond years where their place had been.
It was with a little start that she suddenly found
the person of her thoughts standing at her elbow and
talking to her in bodily presence. But while he
spoke with all the ease and simplicity of old times,
almost making Fleda think it was but last week they
had been strolling through the Place de la Concorde
together, there was a constraint upon her that she
could not get rid of and that bound eye and tongue.
It might have worn off, but his attention was presently
claimed again by Mrs. Evelyn; and Fleda thought best
while yet Constance’s bouquet was unfinished,
to join another party and make her escape into the
drawing-rooms.
Chapter XXXIV.
Have you observed a sitting hare,
List’ning, and fearful of the storm
Of horns and hounds, clap back her ear,
Afraid to keep or leave her form?
Prior.
By the Evelyns’ own desire Fleda’s going
to them was delayed for a week, because, they said,
a furnace was to be brought into the house and they
would be all topsy-turvy till that fuss was over.
Fleda kept herself very quiet in the mean time, seeing
almost nobody but the person whom it was her especial
object to shun. Do her best she could not quite
escape him, and was even drawn into two or three walks
and rides; in spite of denying herself utterly to
gentlemen at home, and losing in consequence a visit
from her old friend. She was glad at last to go
to the Evelyns and see company again, hoping that
Mr. Thorn would be merged in a crowd.
But she could not merge him; and sometimes was almost
inclined to suspect that his constant prominence in
the picture must be owing to some mysterious and wilful
conjuration going on in the background. She was
at a loss to conceive how else it happened that despite
her utmost endeavours to the contrary she was so often
thrown upon his care and obliged to take up with his
company. It was very disagreeable. Mr. Carleton
she saw almost as constantly, but though frequently
near she had never much to do with him. There
