"I am not sure that it would be her pleasure I should," said Thorn. "Shall I tell this gentleman, Miss Ringgan, who needs protection, and from what?"
Fleda raised her head, and, putting her hand on his arm, looked a concentration of entreaty lips were sealed.
"Will you give me," said he, gently taking the hand in his own, "your sign-manual for Captain Rossitur's security? It is not too late. Ask it of her, Sir."
"What does this mean?" said Charlton, looking from his cousin to his friend.
"You shall have the pleasure of knowing, Sir, just so soon as
I find it convenient."
"I will have a few words with you on this subject, my fine fellow," said Captain Rossitur, as the other was preparing to leave the room.
"You had better speak to somebody else," said Thorn. "But I am ready."
Charlton muttered an imprecation upon his absurdity, and turned his attention to Fleda, who needed it, and yet desired anything else. For a moment she had an excuse for not answering his questions in her inability; and then, opportunely, Mrs. Decatur came in to look after her; and she was followed by her daughter. Fleda roused all her powers to conceal and command her feelings; rallied herself; said she had been a little weak and faint; drank water, and declared herself able to go back into the drawing-room. To go home would have been her utmost desire, but at the instant her energies were all bent to the one point of putting back thought, and keeping off suspicion. And in the first hurry and bewilderment of distress, the dread of finding herself alone with Charlton, till she had had time to collect her thoughts, would of itself have been enough to prevent her accepting the proposal.
She entered the drawing-room again on Mrs. Decatur's arm, and had stood a few minutes talking or listening, with that same concentration of all her faculties upon the effort to bear up outwardly, when Charlton came up to ask if he should leave her. Fleda made no objection, and he was out of her sight, far enough to be beyond reach or recal, when it suddenly struck her that she ought not to have let him go without speaking to him without entreating him to see her in the morning before he saw Thorn. The sickness of this new apprehension was too much for poor Fleda's power of keeping up. She quietly drew her arm from Mrs. Decatur's, saying that she would sit down; and sought out a place for herself, apart from the rest, by an engraving-stand, where for a little while, not to seem unoccupied, she turned over print after print, that she did not see. Even that effort failed at last; and she sat gazing at one of Sir Thomas Lawrence's bright-faced children, and feeling as if in herself the tides of life were setting back upon their fountain preparatory to being still for ever. She became sensible that some one was standing beside the engravings, and looked up at Mr. Carleton.
"Are. you ill?" he said, very gently and tenderly.