"Except that you have more colour in your cheeks and more sparkles in your eyes. Dear little creature that you were! I want to make you know my children. Do you remember that Mr. and Mrs. Carleton that took such care of you at Montepoole?"
"Certainly I do!--very well."
"We saw them last winter--we were down at their country-place in---- shire. They have a magnificent place there--everything you can think of to make life pleasant. We spent a week with them. My dear Fleda!--I wish I could shew you that place! you never saw anything like it."
Fleda eat her pie.
"We have nothing like it in this country--of course--cannot have. One of those superb English country-seats is beyond even the imagination of an American."
"Nature has been as kind to us, hasn't she?" said Fleda.
"O yes, but such fortunes you know. Mr. Olmney, what do you think of those overgrown fortunes? I was speaking to Miss Ringgan just now of a gentleman who has forty thousand pounds a year income--sterling, sir;--forty thousand pounds a year sterling. Somebody says, you know, that 'he who has more than enough is a thief of the rights of his brother,'--what do you think?"
But Mr. Olmney's attention was at the moment forcibly called off by the "income" of a parishioner.
"I suppose," said Fleda, "his thievish character must depend entirely on the use he makes of what he has."
"I don't know," said Mrs. Evelyn shaking her head,--"I think the possession of great wealth is very hardening."