"Dear Constance!" said Fleda, unable to help laughing through all her vexation,--"please do not talk so! You know very well Mr. Stackpole only comes to see your mother."
"He was here last night," said Constance in an extreme state of delight,--"with all the rest of your admirers--ranged in the hall, with their hats in a pile at the foot of the staircase as a token of their determination not to go till you came home; and as they could not be induced to come up to the drawing-room Mr. Evelyn was obliged to go down, and with some difficulty persuaded them to disperse."
Fleda was by this time in a state of indecision betwixt crying and laughing, assiduously attentive to her breakfast.
"Mr. Carleton asked me if you would go to ride with him again the other day, Fleda," said Mrs. Evelyn, with her face of delighted mischief,--"and I excused you; for I thought you would thank me for it."
"Mamma," said Constance, "the mention of that name rouses all the bitter feelings I am capable of! My dear Fleda--we have been friends--but if I see you abstracting my English rose"--
"Look at those roses behind you!" said Fleda.
The young lady turned and sprang at the word, followed by both her sisters; and for some moments nothing but a hubbub of exclamations filled the air,
"Joe, you are enchanting!--But did you ever see such flowers?--Oh those rose-buds!--"
"And these Camellias," said Edith,--"look, Florence, how they are cut--with such splendid long stems."
"And the roses too--all of them--see mamma, just cut from the bushes with the buds all left on, and immensely long stems--Mamma, these must have cost an immensity!--"