"He never told you?"
"No."
"And you never asked him?"
"Why, no, Ma'am!"
"He will be well suited in a wife," said Mrs. Carleton, laughing. "But he can have no objection to your knowing now, I suppose. He never told me but at the latest. You must know, Fleda, that it has been my wish for a great many years that Guy would marry and I almost despaired, he was so difficult to please his taste in everything is so fastidious; but I am glad of it now," she added, kissing Fleda's cheek. "Last spring not this last, but a year ago one evening at home I was talking to him on this subject; but he met everything I said lightly you know his way and I saw my words took no hold. I asked him at last in a kind of desperation, if he supposed there was a woman in the world that could please him; and he laughed, and said, if there was, he was afraid she was not in that hemisphere. And a day or two after he told me he was going to America."
"Did he say for what?"
"No; but I guessed, as soon as I found he was prolonging his stay, and I was sure when he wrote me to come out to him. But I never knew till I landed, Fleda, my dear, any more than that. The first question I asked him was who he was going to introduce to me."
The interval was short to the next steamer, but also the preparations were few. A day or two after the foregoing conversation, Constance Evelyn coming into Fleda's room, found her busy with some light packing.
"My dear little creature!" she exclaimed ecstatically, "are you going with us?"
"No," said Fleda.