Queechy Volume Ii Part 90

"The city is very hot and dusty just now."

"Very, and I am sorry to keep you in it, Mrs. Carleton."

"Keep me, love?" said Mrs. Carleton, bending down her face to her again; "it's a pleasure to be kept anywhere by you."

Fleda shut her eyes, for she could hardly bear a little word now.

"I don't like to keep _you_ here; it is not myself I am thinking of. I fancy a change would do you good."

"You are very kind, Ma'am."

"Very interested kindness," said Mrs. Carleton. "I want to see you looking a little better before Guy comes; I am afraid he will look grave at both of us." But as she paused and stroked Fleda's cheek, it came into her mind to doubt the truth of the last a.s.sertion, and she ended off with, "I wish he would come!"

So Fleda wished truly; for now, cut off as she was from her old a.s.sociations, she longed for the presence of the one friend that was to take place of them all.

"I hope we shall hear soon that there is some prospect of his getting free," Mrs. Carleton went on. "He has been gone now ?

how many weeks? I am looking for a letter to-day. And there it is!"

The maid at this moment entered with the steamer despatches.

Mrs. Carleton pounced upon the one she knew, and broke it open.

"Here it is! and there is yours, Fleda."

With kind politeness, she went off to read her own, and left Fleda to study hers at her leisure. An hour after she came in again. Fleda's face was turned from her.

"Well, what does he say?" she asked in a lively tone.

"I suppose, the same he has said to you, Ma'am," said Fleda.

"I don't suppose it, indeed," said Mrs. Carleton, laughing.

"He has given me sundry charges, which, if he has given you, it is morally certain we shall never come to an understanding."

"I have received no charges," said Fleda.

"I am directed to be very careful to find out your exact wish in the matter, and to let you follow no other. So what is it, my sweet Fleda?"

"I promised," said Fleda, colouring and turning her letter over. But there she stopped.

"Whom, and what?" said Mrs. Carleton, after she had waited a reasonable time.

"Mr. Carleton."

"What did you promise, my dear Fleda?"

"That I would do as he said."

"But he wishes you to do as you please."

Fleda brought her eyes quick out of Mrs. Carleton's view, and was silent.

"What do you say, dear Fleda?" said the lady, taking her hand and bending over her.

"I am sure we shall be expected," said Fleda. "I will go."

"You are a darling girl!" said Mrs. Carleton, kissing her again and again. "I will love you for ever for that. And I am sure it will be the best thing for you ? the sea will do you good ? and _ne vous en deplaise_, our own home is pleasanter just now than this dusty town. I will write by this steamer and tell Guy we will be there by the next. He will have everything in readiness, I know, at all events; and in half an hour after you get there, my dear Fleda, you will be established in all your rights ? as well as if it had been done six months before. Guy will know how to thank you. But, after all, Fleda, you might do him this grace ? considering how long he has been waiting upon you."

Something in Fleda's eyes induced Mrs. Carleton to say, laughing ?

"What's the matter?"

"He never waited for me," said Fleda, simply.

"Didn't he? But, my dear Fleda!" said Mrs. Carleton, in amused extremity ? "how long is it since you knew what he came out here for?"

"I don't know now, Ma'am," said Fleda. But she became angelically rosy the next minute.

"He never told you?"

"No."

"And you never asked him?"

"Why, no, Ma'am!"

"He will be well suited in a wife," said Mrs. Carleton, laughing. "But he can have no objection to your knowing now, I suppose. He never told me but at the latest. You must know, Fleda, that it has been my wish for a great many years that Guy would marry ? and I almost despaired, he was so difficult to please ? his taste in everything is so fastidious; but I am glad of it now," she added, kissing Fleda's cheek. "Last spring ? not this last, but a year ago ? one evening at home I was talking to him on this subject; but he met everything I said lightly ? you know his way ? and I saw my words took no hold. I asked him at last in a kind of desperation, if he supposed there was a woman in the world that could please him; and he laughed, and said, if there was, he was afraid she was not in that hemisphere. And a day or two after he told me he was going to America."

"Did he say for what?"

"No; but I guessed, as soon as I found he was prolonging his stay, and I was sure when he wrote me to come out to him. But I never knew till I landed, Fleda, my dear, any more than that. The first question I asked him was who he was going to introduce to me."

The interval was short to the next steamer, but also the preparations were few. A day or two after the foregoing conversation, Constance Evelyn coming into Fleda's room, found her busy with some light packing.

"My dear little creature!" she exclaimed ecstatically, "are you going with us?"

"No," said Fleda.

"Where are you going, then?"

"To England."

"England? ? Has ? I mean, is there any addition to my list of acquaintances in the city?"

"Not that I know of," said Fleda, going on with her work.

"And you are going to England! Greenhouses will be a desolation to me! ?"

"I hope not," said Fleda, smiling; "you will recover yourself, and your sense of sweetness, in time."