His smile was so peculiar she almost thought he was going to tell her. But just then Mrs. Renney having accomplished the desirable temperature of her feet, came back to warm her ears, and placed herself on the next seat; happily not the one behind but the one before them, where her eyes were thrown away; and the lines of Mr. Carleton's mouth came back to their usual quiet expression.
"You were in particular haste to reach home?" he asked.
Fleda said no, not in the abstract; it made no difference whether to-day or to-morrow.
"You had heard no ill news of your cousin?"
"Not at all, but it is difficult to find an opportunity of making the journey, and I thought I ought to come yesterday."
He was silent again; and the baffled seekers after ways and means who had gone out to try arguments upon the storm, began to come pouring back into the car. And bringing with them not only their loud and coarse voices with every shade of disagreeableness aggravated by ill-humour, but also an average amount of snow upon their hats and shoulders, the place was soon full of a reeking atmosphere of great coats. Fleda was trying to put up her window, but Mr. Carleton gently stopped her and began bargaining with a neighbouring fellow-traveller for the opening of his.
"Well, sir, I'll open it if you wish it," said the man civilly, "but they say we sha'n't have nothing to make fires with more than an hour or two longer;--so maybe you'll think we can't afford to let any too much cold in."
The gentleman however persisting in his wish and the wish being moreover backed with those arguments to which every grade of human reason is accessible, the window was opened. At first the rush of fresh air was a great relief; but it was not very long before the raw snowy atmosphere which made its way in was felt to be more dangerous, if it was more endurable, than the close pent-up one it displaced. Mr. Carleton ordered the window closed again; and Fleda's glance of meek grateful patience was enough to pay any reasonable man for his share of the suffering. Her share of it was another matter. Perhaps Mr. Carleton thought so, for he immediately bent himself to reward her and to avert the evil, and for that purpose brought into play every talent of manner and conversation that could beguile the time and make her forget what she was among. If success were his reward he had it. He withdrew her attention completely from all that was around her, and without tasking it; she could not have borne that. He did not seem to task himself; but without making any exertion he held her eye and ear and guarded both from communication with things disagreeable. He knew it. There was not a change in her eye's happy interest, till in the course of the conversation Fleda happened to mention Hugh, and he noticed the saddening of the eye immediately afterwards.
"Is he ill?" said Mr. Carleton.
"I don't know," said Fleda faltering a little,--"he was not--very,--but a few weeks ago--"