"Sundown!" exclaimed Fleda jumping up;--"is my uncle not here, Mr. Frost?"
"He has been gone half an hour, ma'am."
"And I was to have gone home with him--I have forgotten myself."
"If that is at all the fault of my roses,", said Mr. Carleton smiling, "I will do my best to repair it."
"I am not disposed to call it a fault," said Fleda tying her bonnet-strings,--"it is rather an agreeable thing once in a while. I shall dream of those roses, Mr. Carleton!"
"That would be doing them too much honour."
Very happily she had forgotten herself; and during all the walk home her mind was too full of one great piece of joy and indeed too much engaged with conversation to take up her own subject again. Her only wish was that they might not meet any of the Evelyns;--Mr. Thorn, whom they did meet, was a matter of entire indifference.
The door was opened by Dr. Gregory himself. To Fleda's utter astonishment Mr. Carleton accepted his invitation to come in. She went up stairs to take off her things in a kind of maze.
"I thought he would go away without my seeing him, and now what a nice time I have had!--in spite of Mrs. Evelyn--"
That thought slipped in without Fleda's knowledge, but she could not get it out again.