"When you have been the dearest and best mother to me? Now that is not right, aunt Lucy look up and kiss me."
The pleading sweet tone of voice was not to be resisted. Mrs. Rossitur looked up and kissed her earnestly enough, but with unabated self-reproach.
"I don't deserve to kiss you, for I have let you try yourself beyond your strength. How you look! Oh, how you look!"
"Never mind how I look," said Fleda, bringing her face so close that her aunt could not see it. "You helped me all you could, aunt Lucy don't talk so and I shall look well enough by and by, I am not so very tired."
"You always were so!" exclaimed Mrs. Rossitur, clasping her in her arms again: "and now I am going to lose you, too. My dear Fleda! that gives me more pleasure than anything else in the world!"
But it was a pleasure well cried over.
"We shall all meet again, I hope I will hope," said Mrs.
Rossitur, meekly, when Fleda had risen from her arms.
"Dear aunty! but before that in England you will come to see me. Uncle Rolf will bring you."
Even then, Fleda could not say even that without the blood mounting to her face. Mrs. Rossitur shook her head, and sighed; but smiled a little, too, as if that delightful chink of possibility let some light in.
"I shouldn't like to see Mr. Carleton now," she said, "for I could not look him in the face; and I am afraid he wouldn't want to look in mine, he would be so angry with me."