"I can do nothing with her," she said hurriedly;--"I don't know what to say to her; and she looks like death. Go yourself, Guy; you can manage her if any one can."
Mr. Carleton went immediately.
The room into which a short passage admitted him was cheerless indeed. On a fair afternoon the sun's rays came in there pleasantly, but this was a true November day; a grey sky and a chill raw wind that found its way in between the loose window-sashes and frames. One corner of the room was sadly tenanted by the bed which held the remains of its late master and owner. At a little table between the windows, with her back turned towards the bed, Fleda was sitting, her face bowed in her hands, upon the old quarto bible that lay there open; a shawl round her shoulders.
Mr. Carleton went up to the side of the table and softly spoke her name. Fleda looked up at him for an instant, and then buried her face in her hands on the book as before. That look might have staggered him, but that Mr. Carleton rarely was staggered in any purpose when he had once made up his mind. It did move him,--so much that he was obliged to wait a minute or two before he could muster firmness to speak to her again. Such a look,--so pitiful in its sorrow, so appealing in its helplessness, so imposing in its purity,--he had never seen, and it absolutely awed him. Many a child's face is lovely to look upon for its innocent purity, but more commonly it is not like this; it is the purity of snow, unsullied, but not unsullyable; there is another kind more ethereal, like that of light, which you feel is from another sphere and will not know soil. But there were other signs in the face that would have nerved Mr. Carleton's resolution if he had needed it. Twenty-four hours had wrought a sad change. The child looked as if she had been ill for weeks. Her cheeks were colourless; the delicate brow would have seemed pencilled on marble but for the dark lines which weeping and watching, and still more sorrow, had drawn underneath; and the beautiful moulding of the features shewed under the transparent skin like the work of the sculptor. She was not crying then, but the open pages of the great bible had been wet with very many tears since her head had rested there.
Fleda was sitting, her face bowed in her hands.
"Fleda," said Mr. Carleton after a moment,--"you must come with me."
The words were gently and tenderly spoken, yet they had that tone which young and old instinctively know it is vain to dispute. Fleda glanced up again, a touching imploring look it was very difficult to bear, and her "Oh no--I cannot,"--went to his heart. It was not resistance but entreaty, and all the arguments she would have urged seemed to lie in the mere tone of her voice. She had no power of urging them in any other way, for even as she spoke her head went down again on the bible with a burst of sorrow. Mr. Carleton was moved, but not shaken in his purpose. He was silent a moment, drawing back the hair that fell over Fleda's forehead with a gentle caressing touch; and then he said, still lower and more tenderly than before, but without flinching, "You must come with me, Fleda."
"Mayn't I stay," said Fleda, sobbing, while he could see in the tension of the muscles a violent effort at self-control which he did not like to see,--"mayn't I stay till--till--the day after to-morrow?"
"No, dear Fleda," said he, still stroking her head kindly,--"I will bring you back, but you must go with me now, Your aunt wishes it and we all think it is best. I will bring you back."--