"Circumstances have always forbade it," he answered with a smile which Constance declared was the most fascinating thing she ever saw in her life.
Fleda was arranging her flowers, with the help of some very unnecessary suggestions from the donor.
"Mr. Lewis," said Constance with a kind of insinuation very different from her mother's, made up of fun and daring,--"Mr. Carleton has been giving me a long lecture on botany; while my attention was distracted by listening to your spirituel conversation."
"Well, Miss Constance?"
"And I am morally certain I sha'n't recollect a word of it if I don't carry away some specimens to refresh my memory--and in that case he would never give me another!"
It was impossible to help laughing at the distressful position of the young lady's eyebrows, and with at least some measure of outward grace Mr. Thorn set about complying with her request. Fleda again stood tapping her left hand with her flowers, wondering a little that somebody else did not come and speak to her; but he was talking to Mrs. Evelyn and Mr. Stackpole. Fleda did not wish to join them, and nothing better occurred to her than to arrange her flowers over again; so throwing them all down before her on a marble slab, she began to pick them up one by one and put them together, with it must be confessed a very indistinct realization of the difference between myrtle and lemon blossoms, and as she seemed to be laying acacia to rose, and disposing some sprigs of beautiful heath behind them, in reality she was laying kindness alongside of kindness and looking at the years beyond years where their place had been. It was with a little start that she suddenly found the person of her thoughts standing at her elbow and talking to her in bodily presence. But while he spoke with all the ease and simplicity of old times, almost making Fleda think it was but last week they had been strolling through the Place de la Concorde together, there was a constraint upon her that she could not get rid of and that bound eye and tongue. It might have worn off, but his attention was presently claimed again by Mrs. Evelyn; and Fleda thought best while yet Constance's bouquet was unfinished, to join another party and make her escape into the drawing-rooms.
Chapter XXXIV.
Have you observed a sitting hare,
List'ning, and fearful of the storm
Of horns and hounds, clap back her ear,
Afraid to keep or leave her form?
Prior.
By the Evelyns' own desire Fleda's going to them was delayed for a week, because, they said, a furnace was to be brought into the house and they would be all topsy-turvy till that fuss was over. Fleda kept herself very quiet in the mean time, seeing almost nobody but the person whom it was her especial object to shun. Do her best she could not quite escape him, and was even drawn into two or three walks and rides; in spite of denying herself utterly to gentlemen at home, and losing in consequence a visit from her old friend. She was glad at last to go to the Evelyns and see company again, hoping that Mr. Thorn would be merged in a crowd.