"I have been so unfortunate in the matter of the drives," Mr. Carleton said, when he was about to take leave, and standing before Fleda, "that I am half afraid to mention it again."
"I could not help it both those times, Mr. Carleton," said
Fleda, earnestly.
"Both the last? or both the first?" said he, smiling.
"The last!" said Fleda.
"I have had the honour of making such an attempt twice within the last ten days to my disappointment."
"It was not by my fault then, either, Sir," Fleda said, quietly.
But he knew very well from the expression of her face a moment before, where to put the emphasis her tongue would not make.
"Dare I ask you to go with me, to-morrow?"
"I don't know," said Fleda, with the old childish sparkle of her eye; "but if you ask me, Sir, I will go."
He sat down beside her immediately, and Fleda knew, by his change of eye, that her former thought had been right.