How the voice was broken and quivering before it got through!
The answer this time was a low long-drawn moan, so exceeding plaintive and full of pain that it made Fleda shake like an aspen. But after a moment she spoke again, bearing more heavily with her hand to mark her words.
"I am afraid he will be in presently--he ought not to see you now--Aunt Lucy, I am afraid it might do him an injury he might not get over--"
She spoke with the strength of desperation; her nerves were unstrung by fear, and every joint weakened so that she could hardly support herself. She had not however spoken in vain; one or two convulsive shudders passed over her aunt, and then Mrs. Rossitur suddenly rose turning her face from Fleda; neither would she permit her to follow her. But Fleda thought she had seen that one or two unfolded letters or papers of some kind, they looked like letters, were in her lap when she raised her head.
Left alone, Fleda sat down on the floor by the easy-chair and rested her head there; waiting,--she could do nothing else,--till her extreme excitement of body and mind should have quieted itself. She had a kind of vague hope that time would do something for her before Hugh came in. Perhaps it did; for though she lay in a kind of stupor, and was conscious of no change whatever, she was able when she heard him coming to get up and sit in the chair in an ordinary attitude. But she looked like the wraith of herself an hour ago.
"Fleda!" Hugh exclaimed as soon as he looked from the fire to her face,--"what is the matter?--what is the matter with you?"
"I am not very well--I don't feel very well," said Fleda speaking almost mechanically,--"I shall have a headache to-morrow--"
"Headache! But you look shockingly! what has happened to you? what is the matter, Fleda?"
"I am not ill--I shall be better by and by. There is nothing the matter with me that need trouble you, dear Hugh."
"Nothing the matter with you!" said he,--and Fleda might see how she looked in the reflection of his face,--"where's mother?"