anxiously awaiting your next movement. My dear Fleda, there is
a ring!" —

And giving her the benefit of a most comic and expressive
arching of her eyebrows, Constance flung back the screen into
Fleda's lap, and skimmed away.

Fleda was too vexed for a few minutes to understand more of
Mrs. Thorn's talk than that she was first enlarging upon the
concert, and afterwards detailing to her a long shopping
expedition in search of something which had been a morning's
annoyance. She almost thought Constance was unkind, because
she wanted to go to the concert herself, to lug her in so
unceremoniously, and wished herself back in her uncle's snug,
little, quiet parlour, unless M. Carleton would come.

And there he is, said a quick beat of her heart, as his
entrance explained Constance's "ring."

Such a rush of associations came over Fleda that she was in
imminent danger of losing Mrs. Thorn altogether. She managed,
however, by some sort of instinct, to disprove the assertion
that the mind cannot attend to two things at once, and carried
on a double conversation with herself and with Mrs. Thorn for
some time very vigorously.

"Just the same! — he has not altered a jot," she said to
herself as he came forward to Mrs. Evelyn; — "it is himself! —
his very self — he doesn't look a day older — I'm very glad! —
(Yes, Ma'am, it's extremely tiresome —). How exactly as when