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I wanted exceedingly to see you, and to thank you as well as I could, but I was obliged to leave it"

She could hardly say so much. Her swimming eye gave him more thanks than he wanted. But she scolded herself vigorously, and after a few minutes, was able to look and speak again.

"I hoped you would not think me ungrateful, sir; but in case you might, I wrote to let you know that you were mistaken."

"You wrote to me!" said he.

"Yes, sir, yesterday morning—at least it was put in the post yesterday morning."

"It was more unnecessary than you are aware of,” he said, with a smile, and turning one of his deep looks away from her.

"Are we fast here for all night, Mr Carleton?" she said presently.

"I am afraid so- -I believe so- -I have been out to examine, and the storm is very thick."

"You need not look so about it for me," said Fleda-" I don't care for it at all now."

And a long-drawn breath half told how much she had cared for it, and what a burden was gone.

"You look very little like breasting hardships," said Mr Carleton, bending on her so exactly the look of affectionate care that she had often had from him when she was a child, that Fleda was very near overcome again.

"Oh, you know," she said, speaking by dint of great force upon herself" you know the will is everything, and mine is very good".

But he looked extremely unconvinced and unsatisfied.

"I am so comforted to see you sitting there, sir,” Fleda went on gratefully, "that I am sure I can bear patiently all the rest."

His eye turned away, and she did not know what to make of his gravity. But a moment after, he looked again, and spoke with his usual manner.

"That business you intrusted to me," he said, in a lower tone," I believe you will have no more trouble with it."

"So I thought!-so I gathered, the other night," said Fleda, her heart and her face suddenly full of many things.

"The note was given up-I saw it burned."

Fleda's two hands clasped each other mutely.

"And will he be silent?"

"I think he will choose to be so, for his own sake."

The only sake that would avail in that quarter, Fleda knew. How had Mr Carleton ever managed it?

"And Charlton?" she said, after a few minutes' tearful musing.

"I had the pleasure of Captain Rossitur's company to breakfast the next morning, and I am happy to report that there is no danger of any trouble arising there."

"How shall I ever thank you, sir!" said Fleda, with trembling lips.

His smile was so peculiar, she almost thought he was going to tell her. But just then, Mrs Renney having accomplished the desirable temperature of her feet, came back to warm her ears, and placed herself on the next seat-happily not the one behind, but the one before them, where her eyes were thrown away; and the lines of Mr Carleton's mouth came back to their usual quiet expression.

"You were in particular haste to reach home?" he asked. Fleda said no, not in the abstract; it made no difference whether to-day or to-morrow.

"You had heard no ill news of your cousin?"

"Not at all, but it is difficult to find an opportunity of making the journey, and I thought I ought to come yesterday."

He was silent again; and the baffled seekers after ways and means, who had gone out to try arguments upon the storm, begun to come pouring back into the car. And bringing with them not only their loud and coarse voices, with every shade of disagreeableness, aggravated by ill-humour, but also an average amount of snow upon their hats and shoulders, the place was soon full of a reeking atmosphere of great-coats. Fleda was trying to put up her window, but Mr Carleton gently stopped her, and began bargaining with a neighbouring fellow-traveller for the opening of his.

"Well, sir, I'll open it if you wish it," said the man civilly, "but they say we sha'n't have nothing to make fires with more than an hour or two longer; so maybe you'll think we can't afford to let any too much cold in."

The gentleman, however, persisting in his wish, and the wish being moreover backed with those arguments to which

every grade of human reason is accessible, the window was opened. At first the rush of fresh air was a great relief; but it was not very long before the raw snowy atmosphere, which made its way in, was felt to be more dangerous, if it was more endurable, than the close pent-up one it displaced. Mr Carleton ordered the window closed again; and Fleda's glance of meek grateful patience was enough to pay any reasonable man for his share of the suffering. Her share of it was another matter. Perhaps Mr Carleton thought so, for he immediately bent himself to reward her and to avert the evil, and for that purpose brought into play every talent of manner and conversation that could beguile the time, and make her forget what she was among. If success were his reward he had it. He withdrew her attention completely from all that was around her, and without tasking it; she could not have borne that. He did not seem to task himself; but without making any exertion, he held her eye and ear, and guarded both from communication with things disagreeable. He knew it. There was not a change in her eye's happy interest, till, in the course of the conversation, Fleda happened to mention Hugh, and he noticed the saddening of the eye immediately afterwards. "Is he ill?" said Mr Carleton.

"I don't know," said Fleda, faltering a little-" he was not -very-but a few weeks ago'

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Her eye explained the broken sentences which there, in the neighbourhood of other ears, she dared not finish.

"He will be better after he has seen you," said Mr Carleton gently.

"Yes".

A very sorrowful and uncertain "yes," with an "if" in the speaker's mind, which she did not bring out.

"Can you sing your old song yet," said Mr Carleton, softly

"Yet one thing secures us,
Whatever betide?""

But Fleda burst into tears.

"Forgive me,” he whispered earnestly, "for reminding you of that—you did not need it, and I have only troubled you."

"No, sir, you have not," said Fleda-" it did not trouble me, and Hugh knows it better than I do. I cannot bear anything to-night, I believe"

"So you have remembered that, Mr Carleton ?" she said a minute after.

"Do you remember that?" said he, putting her old little Bible into her hand.

Fleda seized it, but she could hardly bear the throng of images that started up around it. The smooth worn cover brought so back the childish happy days when it had been her constant companion-the shadows of the Queechy of old, and Cynthia and her grandfather; and the very atmosphere of those times when she had led a light-hearted strange wild life all alone with them, reading the Encyclopædia and hunting out the wood-springs. She opened the book and slowly turned over the leaves where her father's hand had drawn those lines of remark and affection round many a passage-the very look of them she knew; but she could not see it now, for her eyes were dim and tears were dropping fast into her lap-she hoped Mr Carleton did not see them, but she could not help it; she could only keep the book out of the way of being blotted. And there were other and later associations she had with it too-how dear!-how tender!-how grateful!

Mr Carleton was quite silent for a good while-till the tears had ceased; then he bent towards her so as to be heard no further off.

"It has been for many years my best friend and companion," he said in a low tone.

Fleda could make no answer, even by look.

"At first," he went on softly, "I had a strong association of you with it; but the time came when I lost that entirely, and itself quite swallowed up the thought of the giver."

A quick glance and smile told how well Fleda understood, how heartily she was pleased with that. But she instantly looked away again.

"And now," said Mr Carleton, after a pause" for some time past, I have got the association again; and I do not choose to have it so. I have come to the resolution to put the book back into your hands, and not receive it again, unless the giver go with the gift."

Fleda looked up, a startled look of wonder, into his face, but the dark eye left no doubt of the meaning of his words; and in unbounded confusion she turned her own and her attention, ostensibly, to the book in her hand, though sight and sense were almost equally out of her power. For a few

minutes poor Fleda felt as if all sensation had retreated to her finger-ends. She turned the leaves over and over, as if willing to cheat herself or her companion into the belief that she had something to think of there, while associations and images of the past were gone with a vengeance, swallowed up in a tremendous reality of the present; and the book, which a minute ago was her father's Bible, was now-what was it?-something of Mr Carleton's which she must give back to him. But still she held it and looked at it-conscious of no one distinct idea but that, and a faint one besides, that he might like to be repossessed of his property in some reasonable time-time like everything else was in a whirl; the only steady thing in creation seemed to be that perfectly still and moveless figure by her side till her trembling fingers admonished her they would not be able to hold anything much longer; and gently and slowly, without looking, her hand put the book back towards Mr Carleton. That both were detained together she knew, but hardly felt; the thing was that she had given it!

There was no other answer; and there was no further need that Mr Carleton should make any efforts for diverting her from the scene and the circumstances where they were. Probably he knew that, for he made none. He was perfectly silent for a long time, and Fleda was deaf to any other voice that could be raised, near or far. She could not even think.

Mrs Renney was happily snoring, and most of the other people had descended into their coat collars, or, figuratively speaking, had lowered their blinds, by tilting over their hats in some uncomfortable position that signified sleep; and comparative quiet had blessed the place for some time; as little noticed, indeed, by Fleda, as noise would have been. The sole thing that she clearly recognised in connexion with the exterior world was that clasp in which one of her hands lay. She did not know that the car had grown quiet, and that only an occasional grunt of ill-humour, or waking-up colloquy, testified that it was the unwonted domicile of a number of human beings who were harbouring there in a disturbed state of mind. But this state of things could not last. The time came that had been threatened, when their last supply of extrinsic warmth was at an end. Despite shut windows, the darkening of the stove was presently followed by a very sensible and fast

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