"And now, my dear child--ah! you see that I can't get over my old way of talking to you yet--do give me your last news from Wingsdale. You know that I'm such a shocking correspondent that I know as little of what passes in the world beyond Salisbury Plain as if I were a denizen of the moon."
"Poor old Mrs. Ward, my mother tells me, is now a confirmed invalid, and unable to leave her bed."
"And your sweet mother herself?"
"She never mentions her own health; her letters are full of the children."
"Ah! the whity-brown legion of little horrors, who like a swarm of hornets literally drove you out of Laurel Bank, and compelled you to take refuge in Grosvenor Square! I suppose that they have been undergoing the process of taming, at which my aunt is so famous, and that Johnny now does not scratch out any one's eyes, and that Lyddie may be trusted in a store-room full of treacle and sugar. I should think your mother a first-rate hand at bringing up children, judging from the charming specimen before me!"
Flora neither smiled nor blushed at the flattery now.
"But tell me how they all appeared when you were last at Laurel Bank."
Then, indeed, the colour rose to Flora's pale cheek, and it was with an appearance of some embarrassment that she replied, "I have not been there since you were there, on the day of my marriage."
Ada suppressed the exclamation of astonishment that was upon her tongue, for she saw that its utterance would give pain.
"My dear husband has been so much engaged--of course I could not leave him--it is so difficult sometimes to make arrangements--but I hope soon--" Flora stopped short, for her lips were not accustomed to utter an absolute untruth.