"Than I am?" said the young lady, with arched eyebrows. But they went down and her look softened in spite of herself at the eye and smile which answered her.
"I should be very glad, dear Constance, to know you were as happy as I."
"Why do you think I am not?" said the young lady a little tartly.
"Because no happiness would satisfy me that cannot last"
"And why can't it last?"
"It is not built upon lasting things."
"Pshaw!" said Constance, "I wouldn't have such a dismal kind of happiness as yours, Fleda, for anything."
"Dismal!" said Fleda smiling,--"because it can never disappoint me?--or because it isn't noisy?"
"My dear little Fleda!" said Constance in her usual manner,--"you have lived up there among the solitudes till you have got morbid ideas of life--which it makes me melancholy to observe. I am very much afraid they verge towards stagnation."
"No indeed!" said Fleda laughing; "but, if you please, with me the stream of life has flowed so quietly that I have looked quite to the bottom, and know how shallow it is, and growing shallower;--I could not venture my bark of happiness there; but with you it is like a spring torrent,--the foam and the roar hinder your looking deep into it."