"Do you trust me?" he said after another second of pausing.
"Perfectly!" said Fleda amidst her tears, too much excited to know what she was saying, and in her simplicity half forgetting that she was not a child still;--"more than any one in the world!"
The few words he had spoken, and the manner of them, had curiously borne her back years in a minute; she seemed to be under his care more than for the drive home. He did not speak again for a minute; when he did his tone was very quiet and lower than before.
"Give me what a friend can have in charge to do for you, and it shall be done."
Fleda raised her head and looked out of the window in a silence of doubt. The carriage stopped at Mrs. Evelyn's.
"Not now," said Mr. Carleton, as the servant was about to open the door;--"drive round the square--till I speak to you."
Fleda was motionless and almost breathless with uncertainty. If Charlton could be hindered from meeting Mr. Thorn--But how, could Mr. Carleton effect it?--But there was that in him or in his manner which invariably created confidence in his ability, or fear of it, even in strangers; and how much more in her who had a childish but very clear recollection of several points in his character which confirmed the feeling. And might not something be done, through his means, to facilitate her uncle's escape? of whom she seemed to herself now the betrayer.--But to tell him the story I--a person of his high nice notions of character--what a distance it would put even between his friendship and her,--but that thought was banished instantly, with one glance at Mr. Thorn's imputation of ungenerousness. To sacrifice herself to him would not have been generosity,--to lower herself in the esteem of a different character, she felt, called for it. There was time even then too for one swift thought of the needlessness and bitter fruits of wrong-doing. But here they were;--should she make them known?--and trouble Mr. Carleton, friend though he were, with these miserable matters in which he had no concern?--She sat with a beating heart and a very troubled brow, but a brow as easy to read as a child's. It was the trouble of anxious questioning. Mr. Carleton watched it for a little while,--undecided as ever, and more pained.
"You said you trusted me," he said quietly, taking her hand again.
"But--I don't know what you could do, Mr. Carleton," Fleda said with a trembling voice.
"Will you let me be the judge of that?"