"An indirect remedy is sometimes the very best that can be employed. However, it is always true that the more our eyes are fixed upon the source of light, the less we notice the shadows that things we are passing fling across our way."
Fleda did not know how to talk for a little while; she was too happy. Whatever kept Mr. Carleton from talking, he was silent also. Perhaps it was the understanding of her mood.
"Mr. Carleton," said Fleda, after a little time, "did you ever carry out that plan of a rose-garden that you were talking of a long while ago?"
"You remember it?" said he, with a pleased look. "Yes, that was one of the first things I set about, after I went home but I did not follow the regular fashion of arrangement that one of your friends is so fond of."
"I should not like that for anything," said Fleda, "and least of all for roses."
"Do you remember the little shrubbery path that opened just in front of the library windows leading, at the distance of half a mile, to a long, narrow, winding glen?"
"Perfectly well," said Fleda, "through the wood of evergreens Oh, I remember the glen very well."
"About half way from the house," said he, smiling at her eyes, "a glade opens, which merges at last in the head of the glen I planted my roses there the circumstances of the ground were very happy for disposing them according to my wish."
"And how far?"
"The roses? Oh, all the way, and some distance down the glen. Not a continuous thicket of them," he added, smiling again "I wished each kind to stand so that its peculiar beauty should be fully relieved and appreciated; and that would have been lost in a crowd."