She stooped her face from his sight and he could but just understand her words.
"I was disappointed--"
"What, in me!"
Her tears gave the answer; she could add to them nothing but an assenting nod of her head.
They would have flowed in double measure if she had guessed the pain she had given. Her questioner heard her with a keen pang which did not leave him for days. There was some hurt pride in it, though other and more generous feelings had a far larger share. He, who had been admired, lauded, followed, cited, and envied, by all ranks of his countrymen and countrywomen;--in whom nobody found a fault that could be dwelt upon amid the lustre of his perfections and advantages;--one of the first young men in England, thought so by himself as well as by others;--this little pure being had been disappointed in him. He could not get over it. He reckoned the one judgment worth all the others. Those whose direct or indirect flatteries had been poured at his feet were the proud, the worldly, the ambitious, the interested, the corrupted;--their praise was given to what they esteemed, and that, his candour said, was the least estimable part of him. Beneath all that, this truth-loving, truth-discerning little spirit had found enough to weep for. She was right and they were wrong. The sense of this was so keen upon him that it was tea or fifteen minutes before he could recover himself to speak to his little reprover. He paced up and down the deck, while Fleda wept more and more from the fear of having offended or grieved him. But she was soon reassured on the former point. She was just wiping away her tears, with the quiet expression of patience her face often wore, when Mr. Carleton sat down beside her and took one of her hands.
"Elfie," said he,--"I promise you I will never say such a thing again."
He might well call her his good angel, for it was an angelic look the child gave him. So purely humble, grateful, glad,--so rosy with joyful hope,--the eyes were absolutely sparkling through tears. But when she saw that his were not dry, her own overflowed. She clasped her other hand to his hand and bending down her face affectionately upon it, she wept,--if ever angels weep,--such tears as they.
"Elfie," said Mr. Carleton, as soon as he could,--"I want you to go down stairs with me; so dry those eyes, or my mother will be asking all sorts of difficult questions."
Happiness is a quick restorative. Elfie was soon ready to go where he would.
They found Mrs. Carleton fortunately wrapped up in a new novel, some distance apart from the other persons in the cabin. The novel was immediately laid aside to take Fleda on her lap and praise Guy's nursing.