"Perfectly quiet, ma'am. It needed only that my master should be at home to make them so."
"How is that?"
"He has their love and their ear, ma'am, and so it is that he can just do his pleasure with them."
"How is it in the neighbouring country?"
"They're quiet, ma'am, I believe,--mostly--there's been some little disturbance in one place and another, and more fear of it, as well as I can make out, but it's well got over, as it appears. The noblemen and gentlemen in the country around were very glad, all of them I am told, of Mr. Carleton's return. Is there nothing more I can do for you, ma'am?"
The last question was put with an indefinable touch of kindliness which had not softened the respect of her first words. Fleda begged her to show the way to the library, which Mrs. Fothergill immediately did, remarking as she ushered her in that "those were Mr. Carleton's favourite rooms."
Fleda did not need to be told that; she put the remark and the benignity together, and drew a nervous inference. But Mrs. Fothergill was gone and she was alone. Nobody was there, as Mrs. Carleton had said.
Fleda stood still in the middle of the floor, looking around her, in a bewildered effort to realize the past and the present; with all the mind in the world to cry, but there was too great a pressure of excitement and too much strangeness of feeling at work. Nothing before her in the dimly familiar place served at all to lessen this feeling, and recovering from her maze she went to one of the glazed doors, which stood open, and turned her back upon the room with its oppressive recollections. Her eye lighted upon nothing that was not quiet now. A secluded piece of smooth green, partially bordered with evergreens and set with light shrubbery of rare kinds, exquisitely kept; over against her a sweetbriar that seemed to have run wild, indicating, Fleda was sure, the entrance of the path to the rose garden, that her memory alone would hardly have helped her to find. All this in the bright early summer morning, and the sweet aromatic smell of firs and flowers coming with every breath. There were draughts of refreshment in the air. It composed her, and drinking it in delightedly Fleda stood with folded arms in the doorway, half forgetting herself and her position, and going in fancy from the firs and the roses over a very wide field of meditation indeed. So lost, that she started fearfully on suddenly becoming aware that a figure had come just beside her.
It was an elderly and most gentlemanly-looking man, as a glance made her know. Fleda was reassured and ashamed in a breath. The gentleman did not notice her confusion, however, otherwise than by a very pleasant and well-bred smile, and immediately entered into some light remarks on the morning, the place, and the improvements Mr. Carleton had made in the latter. Though he said the place was one of those which could bear very well to want improvement; but Carleton was always finding something to do which excited his admiration.
"Landscape gardening is one of the pleasantest of amusements," said Fleda.