"Not that which shews itself most splendid to the eye, but which offers fairest indications to the fancy.'

Fleda looked a little wistfully, for there was a smile rather of the eye thar of the lips which said there was a hidden thought beneath.

"Don't you assign characters to your flowers ?" said he gravely. Always!"

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"That Rosa sulphurea is a haughty high-bred beauty that disdains ever to shew herself beautiful unless she is pleased. I love better what comes nearer home to the charities and wants of every-day life."

He had not answered her, Fleda knew; she thought of what he had said to Mrs. Evelyn about liking beauty but not beauties.

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"the head of the glen

'Then," said he smiling again in that hidden way, gave me the soil I needed for the Bourbons and French roses. "Bourbons?" said Fleda.

دو

"Those are exceeding fine-a hybrid between the Chinese and the Roseà-quatre-saisons-I have not confined them all to the head of the glen; many of them are in richer soil, grafted on standards."

"I like standard roses," said Fleda, "better than any."

66 Not better than climbers ?"

"Better than any climbers I ever saw, except the Banksia."

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There is hardly a more elegant variety than that, though it is not strictly a climber; and indeed when I spoke I was thinking as much of the training roses. Many of the Noisettes are very fine. But I have the climbers all over-in some parts nothing else, where the wood closes in upon the path, there the evergreen roses or the Ayrshire cover the ground under the trees, or are trained up the trunks and allowed to find their own way through the branches down again; the Multiflora in the same manner. I have made the Boursault cover some unsightly rocks that were in my way. Then in wider parts of the glade nearer home are your favourite standards-the Damask, and Provence, and Moss, which you know are varieties of the Centifolia, and the Noisette standards, some of them are very fine, and the Chinese roses, and countless hybrids and varieties of all these, with many Bourbons; and your beautiful American yellow rose, and the Austrian briar and Eglantine, and the Scotch and white and Dog roses in their innumerable varieties change admirably well with the others, and relieve the eye very happily."

"Relieve the eye!" said Fleda, "my imagination wants relieving! Isn't there I have a fancy that there is a view of the sea from some parts of that walk, Mr. Carleton ?"

"Yes, you have a good memory," said he smiling. "On one side the wood is rather dense, and in some parts of the other side; but elsewhere the trees are thinned off towards the south-west, and in one or two points the descent of the ground and some cutting have given free access to the air and free range to the eye, bounded only by the sea line in the distance, if indeed that can be said to bound anything."

"I haven't seen it since I was a child," said Fleda.

"And for how long

a time in the year is this literally a garden of roses, Mr. Carleton?" "The perpetual roses are in bloom for eight months, the Damask and the Chinese, and some of their varieties, the Provence roses, are in blossom all the summer."

"Ah we can do nothing like that in this country," said Fleda shaking her head; " our winters are unmanageable.' She was silent a minute, turning over the leaves of her book in an abstracted manner. "You have struck out upon a grave path of reflection," said Mr. Carleton gently, "and left me bewildered among the roses.'

"I was thinking," said Fleda, looking up and laughing, "I was moralizing to myself upon the curious equalization of happiness in the world. I just sheered off from a feeling of envy, and comfortably reflected that one measures happiness by what one knows, not by what one does not know; and so that in all probability I have had near as much enjoyment in the little number of plants that I have brought up and cherished and known intimately, as you, sir, in your superb walk through fairyland."

"Do you suppose," said he laughing, "that I leave the whole care of fairyland to my gardener? No, you are mistaken; when the roses are to act as my correctors I find I must become theirs. I seldom go among them without a pruning knife and never without wishing for one. And you are certainly right so far, that the plants on which I bestow most pains give me the most pleasure. There are some that no hand but mine ever touches, and those are by far the best loved of my eye.'

A discussion followed, partly natural, partly moral, on the manner of pruning various roses, and on the curious connection between care and complacency, and the philosophy of the same.

"The rules of the library are to shut up at sundown, sir," said one of the bookmen who had come into the room.

"Sundown!" exclaimed Fleda jumping up; "is my uncle not here, Mr. Frost?""He has been gone half an hour, ma'am."

"And I was to have gone home with him-I have forgotten myself." "If that is at all the fault of my roses," said Mr. Carleton smiling, “I will do my best to repair it.'

"I am not disposed to call it a fault," said Fleda, tying her bonnetstrings, "it is rather an agreeable thing once in a while. I shall dream of those roses, Mr. Carleton!"

"That would be doing them too much honour."

Very happily she had forgotten herself; and during all the walk home her mind was too full of one great piece of joy and, indeed, too much engaged with conversation to take up her own subject again. Her only wish was that they might not meet any of the Evelyns; Mr. Thorn, whom they did meet, was a matter of entire indifference. The door was opened by Dr. Gregory himself. To Fleda's utter astonishment Mr. Carleton accepted his invitation to come in. She went upstairs to take off her things in a kind of maze.

"I thought he would go away without my seeing him, and now what a nice time I have had! in spite of Mrs. Evelyn- That thought slipped in without Fleda's knowledge, but she could not get it out again.

"I don't know how much it has been her fault either, but one thing is certain, I never could have it at her house. How very glad I am! How very glad I am! that I have seen him and heard all this from his own lips. But how very funny that he will be here to tea.

"Well!" said the doctor when she came down, "you do look freshened up, I declare. Here is this girl, sir, was coming to me a little while ago complaining that she wanted something fresh, and begging me to take her back to Queechy, forsooth, to find it with two feet of snow on the ground. Who wants to see you at Queechy?" he said, facing round upon her with a look half fierce half quizzical.

Fleda laughed, but was vexed to feel that she could not help colouring and colouring exceedingly; partly from the consciousness of his meaning, and partly from a vague notion that somebody else was conscious of it too. Dr. Gregory, however, dashed right off into the thick of conversation with his guest, and kept him busily engaged till tea-time. Fleda sat still on the sofa, looking and listening with simple pleasure; memory served her up a

rich entertainment enough. Yet she thought her uncle was the most heartily interested of the two in the conversation; there was a shade more upon Mr. Carleton, not than he often wore, but than he had worn a little while ago. Dr. Gregory was a great bibliopole, and in the course of the hour hauled out and made his guest overhaul no less than seventy musty old folios; and Fleda could not help fancying that he did it with an access of gravity greater even than the occasion called for. The grace of his manner, however, was unaltered; and at tea she did not know whether she had been right or not. Demurely as she sat there behind the tea-urn, for Dr. Gregory still engrossed all the attention of his guest as far as talking was concerned, Fleda was again inwardly smiling to herself at the oddity and the pleasantness of the chance that had brought those three together in such a quiet way, after all the weeks she had been seeing Mr. Carleton at a distance. And she enjoyed the conversation too; for though Dr. Gregory was a little fond of his hobby it was still conversation worthy the name.

"I have been so unfortunate in the matter of the drives," Mr. Carleton said, when he was about to take leave and standing before Fleda, “that I am half afraid to mention it again.

"I could not help it, both those times, Mr. Carleton," said Fleda earnestly.

"Both the last? or both the first?" said he smiling.

"The last!" said Fleda.

"I have had the honour of making such an attempt twice within the last ten days-to my disappointment.”

"It was not by my fault then either, sir," said Fleda quietly.

But he knew very well from the expression of her face a moment before where to put the emphasis her tongue would not make.

"Dare I ask you to go with me to-morrow?"

"I don't know," said Fleda with the old childish sparkle of her eye,— "but if you ask me, sir, I will go.

He sat down beside her immediately, and Fleda knew by his change of eye that her former thought had been right.

"Shall I see you at Mrs. Decatur's to-morrow?"—“ No, sir.”

"I thought I understood," said he in an explanatory tone, "from your friends, the Miss Evelyns, that they were going.

"I believe they are, and I did think of it; but I have changed my mind, and shall stay at home with Mrs. Evelyn." ." After some further conversation the hour for the drive was appointed, and Mr. Carleton took leave.

"Come for me twice and Mrs. Evelyn refused without consulting me!" thought Fleda. "What could make her do so? How very rude he must have thought me! And how glad I am I have had an opportunity of setting that right." So quitting Mrs. Evelyn her thoughts went off upon a long train of wandering over the afternoon's talk.

“Wake up!” said the doctor, laying his hand "you'll want something fresh again presently. are you digging into now?"

kindly upon her shoulder, What mine of profundity

Fleda looked up and came back from her profundity with a glance and smile as simple as a child's.

"Dear uncle Orrin, how came you to leave me alone in the library?" "Was that what you were trying to discover?"

"Oh, no, sir! But why did you, uncle Orrin? I might have been left utterly alone."

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Why," said the doctor, "I was going out, and a friend that I thought I could confide in promised to take care of you."

"A friend! Nobody came near me," said Fleda.

"Then I'll never trust anybody again," said the doctor. "But what were you hammering at, mentally, just now? Come, you shall tell me.'

"Oh nothing, uncle Orrin," said Fleda, looking grave again however; "I was thinking that I had been talking too much to-day." "Talking too much? why whom have you been talking to ?" "Oh, nobody but Mr. Carleton."

"Mr. Carleton! why you didn't say six and a quarter words while he was here."

"No, but I mean in the library, and walking home."

"Talking too much! I guess you did," said the doctor,-"your tongue is like

'the music of the spheres, So loud it deafens human ears.'

How came you to talk too much? I thought you were too shy to talk at all in company.

"No, sir, I am not; I am not at all shy unless people frighten me. It takes almost nothing to do that; but I am very bold if I am not frightened." "Were you frightened this afternoon?"- No, sir."

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"Well, if you weren't frightened, I guess nobody else was," said the doctor.

TH

CHAPTER XXXVI.

Whence came this?

This is some token from a newer friend.-Shakspeare.

`HE snow-flakes were falling softly and thick when Fleda got up the next morning.

"No ride for me to-day-but how very glad I am that I had a chance of setting that matter right. What could Mrs. Evelyn have been thinking of? Very false kindness! if I had disliked to go ever so much she ought to have made me, for my own sake, rather than let me seem so rude-it is true she didn't know how rude. Oh, snow-flakes-how much purer and prettier you are than most things in this place!"

The

No one was in the breakfast parlour when Fleda came down, so she took her book and the dormeuse and had an hour of luxurious quiet before anybody appeared. Not a foot-fall in the house; nor even one outside to be heard, for the soft carpeting of snow which was laid over the streets. gentle breathing of the fire the only sound in the room; while the very light came subdued through the falling snow and the thin muslin curtains, and gave an air of softer luxury to the apartment. Money is pleasant,' thought Fleda, as she took a little complacent review of all this before opening her book. "And yet how unspeakably happier one may be without it than another with it. Happiness never was locked up in a purse yet. I am sure Hugh and I-They must want me at home! "

There was a little sober consideration of the lumps of coal and the contented-looking blaze in the grate, a most essentially home-like thing, and then Fleda went to her book and for the space of an hour turned over her pages without interruption. At the end of the hour "the fowlingpiece," certainly the noisiest of his kind, put his head in, but seeing none of his ladies took it and himself away again and left Fleda in peace for another half hour. Then appeared Mrs. Evelyn in her morning wrapper, and only stopping at the bell-handle, came up to the dormeuse and stooping down kissed Fleda's forehead, with so much tenderness that it won a look of most affectionate gratitude in reply.

"Fleda, my dear, we set you a sad example. But you won't copy it. Joe, breakfast. Has Mr. Evelyn gone down town?"

"Yes ma'am, two hours ago.

"Did it ever occur to you, Fleda my dear," said Mrs. Evelyn, breaking the lumps of coal with the poker in a very leisurely satisfied kind of a way, "Did it ever occur to you to rejoice that you were not born a business man? What a life!"

"I wonder how it compares with that of a business woman," said Fleda laughing. "There is an uncompromising old proverb which says

Man's work is frou sun to sun

But a woman's work is never done.

A saying which she instantly reflected was entirely beyond the comprehension of the person to whose consideration she had offered it. And then came in Florence, rubbing her hands and knitting her eye-brows.

"Why you don't look as bright as the rest of the world, this morning," said Fleda.

"What a wretched storm!"-"Wretched! This beautiful snow! Here have I been enjoying it for this hour."

But Florence rubbed her hands and looked as if Fleda were no rule for other people.

"How horrid it will make the going out to-night, if it snows all day!" "Then you can stay at home," said her mother composedly. "Indeed I shall not, mamma!"

"Mamma!" said Constance, now coming in with Edith, "isn't breakfast ready? It strikes me that the fowling-piece wants polishing up. I have an indistinct impression that the sun would be upon the meridian if he was anywhere.

"Not quite so bad as that," said Fleda smiling; "it is only an hour and a half since I came downstairs."

"You horrid little creature! Mamma, I consider it an act of inhospitality to permit studious habits on the part of your guests. And I am surprised your ordinary sagacity has not discovered that it is the greatest impolicy towards the objects of your maternal care. We are labouring under growing disadvantages; for when we have brought the enemy to at long shot, there is a mean little craft that comes in and unmans him in a close fight before we can get our speaking-trumpets up.'

"Constance! do hush!" said her sister. "You are too absurd."

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"Fact," said Constance gravely. Capt. Lewiston was telling me the other night how the thing is managed; and I recognized it immediately and told him I had often seen it done!"

"Hold your tongue, Constance," said her mother smiling, "and come to breakfast. Half and but half of the mandate the young lady had any idea of obeying.

"I can't imagine what you are talking about, Constance!" said Edith. "And then, being a friend, you see," pursued Constance, "we can do nothing but fire a salute, instead of demolishing her."

"Can't you?" said Fleda. "I am sure many a time I have felt as if you had left me nothing but my colours."

Except your prizes, my dear. I am sure I don't know about your being a friend either, for I have observed that you engage English and American alike."

"She is getting up her colours now," said Mrs. Evelyn in mock gravity, "you can tell what she is."

"Blood-red!" said Constance. "A pirate! I thought so," she ex