"Didn't he?--But my dear Fleda I--" said Mrs. Carleton in amused extremity,--"how long is it since you knew what he came out here for?"
"I don't know now, ma'am," said Fleda. But she became angelically rosy the next minute.
"He never told you?"
"No."--
"And you never asked him?"
"Why no, ma'am!"
"He will be well suited in a wife," said Mrs. Carleton laughing. "But he can have no objection to your knowing now, I suppose. He never told me but at the latest. You must know, Fleda, that it has been my wish for a great many years that Guy would marry--and I almost despaired, he was so difficult to please--his taste in everything is so fastidious; but I am glad of it now," she added, kissing Fleda's cheek. "Last spring--not this last, but a year ago--one evening at home I was talking to him on this subject; but he met everything I said lightly--you know his way--and I saw my words took no hold. I asked him at last in a kind of desperation if he supposed there was a woman in the world that could please him; and he laughed, and said if there was he was afraid she was not in that hemisphere. And a day or two after he told me he was going to America."
"Did he say for what?"
"No,--but I guessed as soon as I found he was prolonging his stay, and I was sure when he wrote me to come out to him. But I never knew till I landed, Fleda my dear, any more than that. The first question I asked him was who he was going to introduce to me."
The interval was short to the next steamer, but also the preparations were few. A day or two after the foregoing conversation, Constance Evelyn coming into Fleda's room found her busy with some light packing.