But Mrs. Pritchard's hospitality must be gone through with first.
The nicest of suppers was served in the bright little parlour and her hostess was a compound of care and good will; nothing was wanting to the feast but a merry heart. Fleda could not bring that, so her performance was unsatisfactory and Mrs. Pritchard was distressed. Fleda went to her own room promising better doings to-morrow.
She awoke in the morning to the full burden of care and sorrow which sheer weakness and weariness the day before had in part laid down; to a quicker sense of the state of things than she had had yet. The blasting evil that had fallen upon them,--Fleda writhed on her bed when she thought of it. The sternest, cruellest, most inflexible, grasp of distress. Poverty may be borne, death may be sweetened, even to the survivors; but disgrace--Fleda hid her head, as if she would shut the idea out with the light. And the ruin it had wrought. Affection killed at the root,--her aunt's happiness withered, for this world,--Hugh's life threatened,--the fair name of his family gone,--the wear and weariness of her own spirit,--but that had hardly a thought. Himself?--oh no one could tell what a possible wreck, now that self-respect and the esteem of others, those two safe-guards of character, were lost to him. "So much security has any woman in a man without religion;" she remembered those words of her aunt Miriam now; and she thought if Mr. Thorn had sought an ill wind to blow upon his pretensions he could not have pitched them better. What fairer promise, without religion, could be than her uncle had given? Reproach had never breathed against his name, and no one less than those who knew him best could fancy that he had ever given it occasion. And who could have more at stake?--and the stake was lost--that was the summing up thought.
No, it was not,--for Fleda's mind presently sprang beyond,--to the remedy; and after a little swift and earnest flitting about of thought over feasibilities and contingencies, she jumped up and dressed herself with a prompt energy which shewed a mind made up to its course. And yet when she came down to the parlour, though bending herself with nervous intentness to the work she had to do, her fingers and her heart were only stayed in their trembling by some of the happy assurances she had been fleeing to;--
"Commit thy works unto the Lord, and all thy thoughts shall be established."--
"In all thy ways acknowledge Him: He shall direct they paths."--
--Assurances, not indeed that her plans should meet with success, but that they should have the issue best for them.
She was early, but the room was warm and in order and the servant had left it. Fleda sought out paper and pencil and sat down to fashion the form of an advertisement,--the first thing to be done. She had no notion how difficult a thing till she came to do it.
"R. R. is entreated to communicate with his niece at the old place in Bleecker-street, on business of the greatest importance."
"It will not do," said Fleda to herself as she sat and looked at it,--"there is not enough to catch his eye; and there is too much if it caught anybody else's eye;--'R. R.', and 'his niece,' and 'Bleecker-street,'--that would tell plain enough."