"IN ALL THY WAYS ACKNOWLEDGE HIM: HE SHALL DIRECT THY PATHS."
Assurances, not, indeed, that her plans should meet with success, but that they should have the issue best for them.
She was early, but the room was warm, and in order, and the servant had left it. Fleda sought out paper and pencil, and sat down to fashion the form of an advertisement the first thing to be done. She had no notion how difficult a thing, till she came to do it.
"R. R. is entreated to communicate with his niece at the old place in Bleecker Street, on business of the greatest importance."
"It will not do," said Fleda, to herself, as she sat and looked at it "there is not enough to catch his eye, and there is too much, if it caught anybody else's eye 'R. R.', and 'his niece,' and 'Bleecker Street,' that would tell plain enough."
"Dear uncle, F. has followed you here on business of the greatest importance. Pray let her see you; she is at the old place."
"It will not do," thought Fleda, again "there is still less to catch his eye I cannot trust it. And if I were to put 'Queechy' over it, that would give the clue to the Evelyns, and everybody. But I had better risk anything rather than his seeing it."
The miserable needlessness of the whole thing, the pitiful weighing of sorrow against sorrow, and shame against shame, overcame her for a little; and then, dashing away the tears she had no time for, and locking up the strong-box of her heart, she took her pencil again.
"Queechy. "Let me see you at the old place. I have come here on urgent business for you. Do not deny me, for H's sake!"
With a trifle of alteration, she thought this would do; and went on to make a number of fair copies of it for so many papers. This was done, and all traces of it out of the way before Mrs. Pritchard came in and the breakfast; and after bracing herself with coffee, though the good housekeeper was still sadly dissatisfied with her indifference to some more substantial brace in the shape of chickens and ham, Fleda prepared herself inwardly and outwardly to brave the wind and the newspaper offices, and set forth. It was a bright, keen day; she was sorry; she would it had been cloudy. It seemed as if she could not hope to escape some eyes in such an atmosphere.