"You made the announcement as if you found it so."
"I was thinking of the time I saw the fieldfares last,—when they were gathering together preparing for their taking flight; and now here they are back again! It seems so little while—and yet it seems a long while too. The summer has gone."
"I am glad it has!" said Mr. Carlisle. "And I am glad Autumn has had the discretion to follow it. I make my bow to the fieldfares."
"You will not expect me to echo that," said Eleanor.
"No. Not now. I will make you do it by and by."
He thought a good deal of his power, Eleanor said to herself as she glanced at him; and sighed as she remembered that she did so too. She was afraid to say anything more. It had not been so pleasant a summer to her that she would have wished to live it over again; yet was she very sorry to know it gone, for more reasons than it would do to let Mr. Carlisle see.
"You do not believe that?" he said, coming with his brilliant eyes to find her out where her thoughts had plunged her. Eleanor came forth of them immediately and answered.
"No more, than that one of those fieldfares, if you should catch it and fasten a leash round its neck, would say it was well done that its time of free flying was over."
"My bird shall soar higher from the perch where I will place her, than ever she ventured before."
"Ay, and stoop to your lure, Mr. Carlisle!"