"Gives you!" said Mr. Carleton.
"No, Sir only by sympathy I thought my agency would be the gentlest."
"I see I was right," she said, looking up, as he did not answer; "but they don't deserve it not half so much as you think. They talk they don't know what. I am sure they never meant half they said never meant to annoy me with it, I mean and I am sure they have a true love for me they have shown it in a great many ways. Constance, especially, never showed me anything else. They have been very kind to me; and as to letting me come away as they did, I suppose they thought I was in a greater hurry to get home than I really was; and they would very likely not have minded travelling so themselves; I am so different from them, that they might in many things judge me by themselves, and yet judge far wrong."
Fleda was going on, but she suddenly became aware that the eye to which she was speaking had ceased to look at the Evelyns, even in imagination, and she stopped short.
"Will you trust me, after this, to see Mrs. Evelyn without the note?" said he, smiling.
But Fleda gave him her hand, very demurely, without raising her eyes again, and he went.
Barby, who had come in to clear away the table, took her stand at the window to watch Mr. Carleton drive off. Fleda had retreated to the fire. Barby looked in silence till the sleigh was out of sight.
"Is he going back to England now?" she said, coming back to the table.
"No."
Barby gathered a pile of plates together, and then inquired