“On the principle that the whole is greater
than a part?” said Mr. Carleton smiling.
“I’ll sleep upon that before I give my
opinion,” said Mr. Stackpole. “Mrs.
Evelyn, good-evening!—”
“Well Mr. Carleton!” said Constance, “you
have said a great deal for women’s minds.”
“Some women’s minds,” he said with
a smile.
“And some men’s minds,” said Fleda.
“I was speaking only in the general.”
Her eye half unconsciously reiterated her meaning
as she shook hands with Mr. Carleton. And without
speaking a word for other people to hear, his look
and smile in return were more than an answer.
Fleda sat for some time after he was gone trying to
think what it was in eye and lip which had given her
so much pleasure. She could not make out anything
but approbation,—the look of loving approbation
that one gives to a good child; but she thought it
had also something of that quiet intelligence—a
silent communication of sympathy which the others in
company could not share.
She was roused from her reverie by Mrs. Evelyn.
“Fleda my dear, I am writing to your aunt Lucy—have
you any message to send?”
“No Mrs. Evelyn—I wrote myself to-day.”
And she went back to her musings.
“I am writing about you, Fleda,” said
Mrs. Evelyn, again in a few minutes.
“Giving a good account, I hope, ma’am,”
said Fleda smiling.
“I shall tell her I think sea-breezes have an
unfavourable effect upon you,” said Mrs. Evelyn;—“that
I am afraid you are growing pale; and that you have
clearly expressed yourself in favour of a garden at
Queechy rather than any lot in the city—or
anywhere else;—so she had better send for
you home immediately.”
Fleda tried to find out what the lady really meant;
but Mrs. Evelyn’s delighted amusement did not
consist with making the matter very plain. Fleda’s
questions did nothing but aggravate the cause of them,
to her own annoyance; so she was fain at last to take
her light and go to her own room.
She looked at her flowers again with a renewal of
the first pleasure and of the quieting influence the
giver of them had exercised over her that evening;
thought again how very kind it was of him to send them,
and to choose them so; how strikingly he differed
from other people; how glad she was to have seen him
again, and how more than glad that he was so happily
changed from his old self. And then from that
change and the cause of it, to those higher, more
tranquilizing, and sweetening influences that own no
kindred with earth’s dust and descend like the
dew of heaven to lay and fertilize it. And when
she laid herself down to sleep it was with a spirit
grave but simply happy; every annoyance and unkindness
as unfelt now as ever the parching heat of a few hours
before when the stars are abroad.
A snake bedded himself under the threshold
of a country house.
