Now, dear little Fleda," said Miss Constance, executing an impatient little persuasive caper round her, ? "won"t you go out and order dinner? for I"m raging. Your woman did give me something, but I found the want of you had taken away all my appet.i.te; and now the delight of seeing you has exhausted me, and I feel that nature is sinking. The stimulus of gratified affection is too much for me."
"You absurd child!" said Fleda; "you haven"t mended a bit. But I told Barby to put on the tea-kettle, and I will administer a composing draught as soon as it can be got ready; we don"t indulge in dinners here in the wilderness. Meanwhile, suppose that exhausted nature try the support of this easy-chair."
She put her visitor gently into it, and, seating herself upon the arm, held her hand, and looked at her with a smiling face, and yet with eyes that were almost too gentle in their welcoming.
"My dear little Fleda! you"re as lovely as you can be! Are you glad to see me?"
"Very."
"Why don"t you ask after somebody else?"
"I was afraid of overtasking your exhausted energies."
"Come, and sit down here upon my lap! ? You shall, or I won"t say another word to you. Fleda! you"ve grown thin! what have you been doing to yourself?"
"Nothing, with that particular purpose."
"I don"t care ? you"ve done something. You have been insanely imagining that it is necessary for you to be in three or four places at the same time; and in the distracted effort after ubiquity, you are in imminent danger of being nowhere; there"s nothing left of you!"
"I don"t wonder you were overcome at the sight of me," said Fleda.
"But you are looking charmingly for all that," Constance went on; "so charmingly, that I feel a morbid sensation creeping all over me while I sit regarding you. Really, when you come to us next winter, if you persist in being ? by way of showing your superiority to ordinary human nature ? a rose without a thorn, the rest of the flowers may all shut up at once. And the rose reddens in my very face, to spite me!"
"Is "ordinary human nature" typified by a thorn? You give it rather a poor character."
"I never heard of a thorn that didn"t bear an excellent character," said Constance, gravely.
"Hush!" said Fleda, laughing; "I don"t want to hear about Mr.
Thorn. Tell me of somebody else."
"I haven"t said a word about Mr. Thorn!" said Constance, ecstatically; "but since you ask about him, I will tell you.
He has not acted like himself since you disappeared from our horizon ? that is, he has ceased to be at all pointed in his attentions to me; his conversation has lost all the acuteness for which I remember you admired it; he has walked Broadway in a moody state of mind all winter, and grown as dull as is consistent with the essential sharpness of his nature. I ought to except our last interview, though, for his entreaties to Mamma that she would bring you home with her were piercing."
Fleda was unable, in spite of herself, to keep from laughing; but entreated that Constance would tell her of somebody else.
"My respected parents are at Montepoole, with all their offspring ? that is, Florence and Edith; I am at present anxiously inquired after, being n.o.body knows where, and to be fetched by Mamma this evening. Wasn"t I good, little Fleda, to run away from Mr. Carleton, to come and spend a whole day in social converse with you!"
"Carleton!" said Fleda.
"Yes? Oh, you don"t know who he is! he"s a new attraction; there"s been nothing like him this great while, and all New York is topsy-turvy about him; the mothers are dying with anxiety, and the daughters with admiration; and it"s too delightful to see the cool superiority with which he takes it all; like a new star that all the people are pointing their telescopes at, as Thorn said, spitefully, the other day. Oh, he has turned my head! I have looked till I cannot look at anything else. I can just manage to see a rose, but my dazzled powers of vision are equal to nothing more."
"My dear Constance!"
"It"s perfectly true! Why, as soon as we knew he was coming to Montepoole, I wouldn"t let Mamma rest till we all made a rush after him; and when we got here first, and I was afraid he wasn"t coming, nothing can express the state of my feelings!
But he appeared the next morning, and then I was quite happy,"
said Constance, rising and falling in her chair, on what must have been ecstatic springs, for wire ones it had none.
"Constance," said Fleda, with a miserable attempt at rebuke, "how can you talk so!"
"And so we were all riding round here this morning, and I had the self-denial to stop to see you, and leave Florence and the Marlboroughs to monopolize him all the way home. You ought to love me for ever for it. My dear Fleda!" said Constance, clasping her hands, and elevating her eyes in mock ecstasy, "if you had ever seen Mr. Carleton!"
"I dare say I have seen somebody as good," said Fleda, quietly.
"My dear Fleda!" said Constance, a little scornfully this time; "you haven"t the least idea what you are talking about!
I tell you, he is an Englishman; he"s of one of the best families in England: not such as you ever see here but once in an age; he"s rich enough to count Mr. Thorn over, I don"t know how many times."
"I don"t like anybody the better for being an Englishman,"
said Fleda; "and it must be a small man whose purse will hold his measure."
Constance made an impatient gesture.
"But I tell you it isn"t! We knew him when we were abroad; and we know what he is; and we know his mother very well. When we were in England, we were a week with them down at their beautiful place in ? shire ? the loveliest time! You see, she was over here with Mr. Carleton once before, a good while ago; and mamma and papa were polite to them, and so they showed us a great deal of attention when we were in England. We had the loveliest time down there you can possibly conceive. And, my dear Fleda, he wears such a fur cloak! ? lined with the most exquisite black fox."
"But, Constance!" said Fleda, a little vexed, though laughing ? "any man may wear a fur cloak; the thing is, what is inside of it."
"It is perfectly indifferent to me what is inside of it," said Constance, ecstatically. "I can see nothing but the edges of the black fox, especially when it is worn so very gracefully."
"But, in some cases, there might be a white fox within."
"There is nothing of the fox about Mr. Carleton," said Constance, impatiently. "If it had been anybody else, I should have said he was a bear two or three times; but he wears everything as he does his cloak, and makes you take what he pleases from him ? what I wouldn"t take from any- body else, I know."
"With a fox lining," said Fleda, laughing.
"Then foxes haven"t got their true character, that"s all. Now I"ll just tell you an instance ? it was at a party somewhere ?
it was at that tiresome Mrs. Swinburne"s, where the evenings are always so stupid, and there was nothing worth going or staying for but the supper ? except Mr. Carleton ? and he never stays five minutes, except at two or three places; and it drives me crazy, because they are places I don"t go to very often ?"
"Suppose you keep your wits, and tell me your story."
"Well ? don"t interrupt me ? he was there, and he had taken me into the supper-room, when mamma came along, and took it into her head to tell me not to take something ? I forget what ?
punch, I believe ? because I had not been well in the morning.
Now, you know, it was absurd. I was perfectly well then, and I told her I shouldn"t mind her; but do you believe, Mr.
Carleton wouldn"t give it to me? ? absolutely told me he wouldn"t, and told me why, as coolly as possible, and gave me a gla.s.s of water, and made me drink it; and if it had been anybody else, I do a.s.sure you I would have flung it in his face, and never spoken to him again; and I have been in love with him ever since. Now, is that tea going to be ready?"
"Presently. How long have you been here?"
"Oh, a day or two ? and it has poured with rain every single day since we came, till this one; and just think," said Constance with a ludicrously scared face ? "I must make haste, and be back again. You see, I came away on principle, that I may strike with the effect of novelty when I appear again; but if I stay _too_ long, you know ? there is a point ?"
"On the principle of the ice-boats," said Fleda, "that back a little to give a better blow to the ice, where they find it tough?"
"Tough!" said Constance.
"Does Florence like this paragon of yours as well as you do?"
"I don"t know ? she don"t talk so much about him, but that proves nothing; she"s too happy to talk _to_ him. I expect our family concord will be shattered by and by," said Constance, shaking her head.
"You seem to take the prospect philosophically," said Fleda, looking amused. "How long are you going to stay at the Pool?"
Constance gave an expressive shrug, intimating that the deciding of that question did not rest with her.