"Yes ? what is it you look for in a face?" said Mrs. Evelyn.
"Let us hear whether America has any chance," said Mr. Thorn, who had joined the group, and placed himself precisely so as to hinder Fleda"s view.
"My fancy has no stamp of nationality, in this, at least," he said, pleasantly.
"Now, for instance, the Miss Delancys ? don"t you call them handsome, Mr. Carleton?" said Florence.
"Yes," he said, half smiling.
"But not beautiful? Now, what is it they want?"
"I do not wish, if I could, to make the want visible to other eyes than my own."
"Well, Cornelia Schenck ? how do you like her face?"
"It is very pretty-featured."
"Pretty-featured! Why, she is called beautiful! She has a beautiful smile, Mr. Carleton!"
"She has only one."
"Only one! and how many smiles ought the same person to have?"
cried Florence, impatiently. But that which instantly answered her said forcibly, that a plurality of them was possible.
"I have seen one face," he said, gravely, and his eye seeking the floor, "that had, I think, a thousand."
"Different smiles!" said Mrs. Evelyn, in a constrained voice.
"If they were not all absolutely that, they had so much of freshness and variety that they all seemed new."
"Was the mouth so beautiful?" said Florence.
"Perhaps it would not have been remarked for beauty when it was perfectly at rest, but it could not move with the least play of feeling, grave or gay, that it did not become so in a very high degree. I think there was no touch or shade of sentiment in the mind that the lips did not give with singular nicety; and the mind was one of the most finely wrought I have ever known."
"And what other features went with this mouth?" said Florence.
"The usual complement, I suppose," said Thorn. " "_Item_, two lips indifferent red; _item_, two gray eyes, with lids to them; _item_, one neck, one chin, and so forth."
"Mr. Carleton, Sir," said Mrs. Evelyn, blandly," as Mr. Evelyn says, women may be forgiven for wondering, wont you answer Florence"s question?"
"Mr. Thorn has done it, Mrs. Evelyn, for me."
"But I have great doubts of the correctness of Mr. Thorn"s description, Sir; wont you indulge us with yours?"
"Word-painting is a difficult matter, Mrs. Evelyn, in some instances; if I must do it, I will borrow my colours. In general, "that which made her fairness much the fairer was, that it was but an amba.s.sador of a most fair mind." "
"A most exquisite picture!" said Thorn; "and the originals don"t stand so thick that one is in any danger of mistaking them. Is the painter Shakespeare? ? I don"t recollect."
"I think Sidney, Sir; I am not sure."
"But still, Mr. Carleton," said Mrs. Evelyn, "this is only in general ? I want very much to know the particulars; what style of features belonged to this face?"
"The fairest, I think, I have ever known," said Mr. Carleton.
"You asked me, Miss Evelyn, what was my notion of beauty; this face was a good ill.u.s.tration of it. Not perfection of outline, though it had that, too, in very uncommon degree; but the loveliness of mind and character to which these features were only an index; the thoughts were invariably telegraphed through eye and mouth more faithfully than words could give them."
"What kind of eyes?" said Florence.
His own grew dark as he answered ?
"Clear and pure as one might imagine an angel"s ? through which I am sure my good angel many a time looked at me."
Good angels were at a premium among the eyes that were exchanging glances just then.
"And Mr. Carleton," said Mrs. Evelyn, "is it fair to ask ?
this paragon ? is she living, still?"
"I hope so," he answered, with his old light smile, dismissing the subject.
"You spoke so much in the past tense," said Mrs. Evelyn, apologetically.
"Yes; I have not seen it since it was a child"s."
"A child"s face! Oh," said Florence, "I think you see a great many children"s faces with that kind of look."
"I never saw but the one," said Mr. Carleton, drily.
So far Fleda listened, with cheeks that would certainly have excited Mrs. Thorn"s alarm, if she had not been happily engrossed with Miss Tomlinson"s affairs; though up to the last two minutes the idea of herself had not entered Fleda"s head in connection with the subject of conversation. But then, feeling it impossible to make her appearance in public that evening, she quietly slipped out of the open window close by, which led into a little greenhouse on the piazza, and by another door gained the hall and the dressing-room.
When Dr. Gregory came to Mrs. Evelyn"s an hour or two after, a figure all cloaked and hooded ran down the stairs and met him in the hall.
"Ready!" said the doctor, in surprise.
"I have been ready some time, Sir," said Fleda.
"Well," said he, "then we"ll go straight home, for I"ve not done my work yet."
"Dear uncle Orrin," said Fleda, "if I had known you had work to do, I wouldn"t have come."
"Yes, you would," said he, decidedly.
She clasped her uncle"s arm, and walked with him briskly home through the frosty air, looking at the silent lights and shadows on the walls of the street, and feeling a great desire to cry.
"Did you have a pleasant evening?" said the doctor, when they were about half way.
"Not particularly, Sir," said Fleda, hesitating.
He said not another word till they got home, and Fleda went up to her room. But the habit of patience overcame the wish to cry; and though the outside of her little gold-clasped bible awoke it again, a few words of the inside were enough to lay it quietly to sleep.