"How is it in the neighbouring country?"
"They're quiet, Ma'am, I believe mostly there's been some little disturbance in one place and another, and more fear of it, as well as I can make out, but it's well got over, as it appears. The noblemen and gentlemen in the country around were very glad, all of them, I am told, of Mr. Carleton's return. Is there nothing more I can do for you, Ma'am?"
The last question was put with an indefinable touch of kindliness which had not softened the respect of her first words. Fleda begged her to show the way to the library, which Mrs. Fothergill immediately did, remarking, as she ushered her in, that "those were Mr. Carleton's favourite rooms."
Fleda did not need to be told that; she put the remark and the
benignity together, and drew a nervous inference. But Mrs.
Fothergill was gone, and she was alone. Nobody was there, as
Mrs. Carleton had said.
Fleda stood still in the middle of the floor, looking around her, in a bewildered effort to realize the past and the present; with all the mind in the world to cry, but there was too great a pressure of excitement, and too much strangeness of feeling at work. Nothing before her, in the dimly familiar place, served at all to lessen this feeling, and, recovering from her maze, she went to one of the glazed doors, which stood open, and turned her back upon the room with its oppressive recollections. Her eye lighted upon nothing that was not quiet now. A secluded piece of smooth green, partially bordered with evergreens, and set with light shrubbery of rare kinds, exquisitely kept; over against her a sweetbriar that seemed to have run wild, indicating, Fleda was sure, the entrance of the path to the rose garden, that her memory alone would hardly have helped her to find. All this in the bright early summer morning, and the sweet aromatic smell of firs and flowers coming with every breath. There were draughts of refreshment in the air. It composed her, and drinking it in delightedly, Fleda stood with folded arms in the doorway, half forgetting herself and her position, and going in fancy from the firs and the roses, over a very wide field of meditation indeed. So lost that she started fearfully on suddenly becoming aware that a figure had come just beside her.
It was an elderly and most gentlemanly-looking man, as a glance made her know. Fleda was reassured and ashamed in a breath. The gentleman did not notice her confusion, however, otherwise than by a very pleasant and well-bred smile, and immediately entered into some light remarks on the morning, the place, and the improvements Mr. Carleton had made in the latter. Though he said the place was one of those which could bear very well to want improvement; but Carleton was always finding something to do which excited his admiration.
"Landscape gardening is one of the pleasantest of amusements," said Fleda.
"I have just knowledge enough in the matter to admire; to originate any ideas is beyond me; I have to depend for them upon my gardener and my wife, and so I lose a pleasure, I suppose; but every man has his own particular hobby. Carleton, however, has more than his share he has half a dozen, I think."
"Half a dozen hobbies!" said Fleda.
"Perhaps I should not call them hobbies, for he manages to ride them all skilfully; and a hobby-horse, I believe, always runs away with a man."