regret that he had lost them than exulting pride and delight in what they
had been,--perhaps not so much. And Fleda delighted to go back and feed
her imagination with stories of the mother whom she could not remember,
and of the father whose fair bright image stood in her memory as the
embodiment of all that is high and noble and pure. A kind of guardian
angel that image was to little Fleda. These ideal likenesses of her father
and mother, the one drawn from history and recollection, the other from
history only, had been her preservative from all the untoward influences
and unfortunate examples which had surrounded her since her father's death
some three or four years before had left her almost alone in her
grandfather's house. They had created in her mind a standard of the true
and beautiful in character, which nothing she saw around her, after of
course her grandfather, and one other exception, seemed at all to meet;
and partly from her own innate fineness of nature, and partly from this
pure ideal always present with her, she had shrunk almost instinctively
from the few varieties of human nature the country-side presented to her,
and was in fact a very isolated little being, living in a world of her
own, and clinging with all her strong outgoings of affection to her
grandfather only; granting to but one other person any considerable share
in her regard or esteem. Little Fleda was not in the least misanthropical;
she gave her kindly sympathies to all who came in her way on whom they
could possibly be bestowed; but these people were nothing to her: her
spirit fell off from them, even in their presence; there was no affinity.
She was in truth what her grandfather had affirmed of her father, made of
different stuff from the rest of the world. There was no tincture of pride
in all this; there was no conscious feeling of superiority; she could
merely have told you that she did not care to hear these people talk, that
she did not love to be with them; though she _would_ have said so to no
earthly creature but her grandfather, if even to him.