"But what are you looking so sober for?" Constance went on, taking Fleda's screen from her hand and fanning her diligently with it,--"you don't talk! The gravity of Miss Ringgan's face casts a gloom over the brightness of the evening. I couldn't conceive what made me feel chilly in the other room, till I looked about and found that the shade came from this corner; and Mr. Thorn's teeth, I saw, were chattering."
"Constance!" said Fleda laughing and vexed, and making the reproof more strongly with her eyes,--"how can you talk so!"
"Mrs. Thorn, isn't it true?"
Mrs. Thorn's look at Fleda was the essence of good-humour.
"Will you let Lewis come and take you a good long ride to-morrow?"
"No, Mrs. Thorn, I believe not--I intend to stay perseveringly at home to-morrow and see if it is possible to be quiet a day in New York."
"But you will go with me to the concert to-morrow night?--both of you--and hear Truffi;--come to my house and take tea and go from there? will you, Constance?"
"My dear Mrs. Thorn!" said Constance,--"I shall be in ecstacies, and Miss Ringgan was privately imploring me last night to find some way of getting her to it. We regard such material pleasures as tea and muffins with great indifference, but when you look up after swallowing your last cup you will see Miss Ringgan and Miss Evelyn, cloaked and hooded, anxiously awaiting your next movement. My dear Fleda!--there is a ring!--"
And giving her the benefit of a most comic and expressive arching of her eyebrows, Constance flung back the screen into Fleda's lap and skimmed away.
Fleda was too vexed for a few minutes to understand more of Mrs. Thorn's talk than that she was first enlarging upon the concert, and afterwards detailing to her a long shopping expedition in search of something which had been a morning's annoyance. She almost thought Constance was unkind, because she wanted to go to the concert herself to lug her in so unceremoniously; and wished herself back in her uncle's snug little quiet parlour,--unless Mr. Carleton would come.