estly, and was gone again. Fleda ran to her own room, and took the wrappers off such a beauty of a bible as she had never seen; bound in blue velvet, with clasps of gold, and her initials in letters of gold upon the cover. Fleda hardly knew whether to be most pleased or sorry; for to have its place so supplied seemed to put her lost treasure further away than ever. The result was another flood of very tender tears; in the very shedding of which however the new little bible was bound to her heart with cords of association as bright and as incorruptible as its gold mountings.

CHAPTER XV.

Her sports were such as carried riches of knowledge upon the stream of delight.-SIDNEY.

FLE

LEDA had not been a year in Paris when her uncle suddenly made up his mind to quit it and go home. Some trouble in money affairs, felt or feared, brought him to this step, which a month before he had no definite purpose of ever taking. There was cloudy weather in the financial world of New York and he wisely judged it best that his own eyes should be on the spot to see to his own interests. Nobody was sorry for this determination. Mrs. Rossitur always liked what her husband liked, but she had at the same time a decided predilection for home. Marion was glad to leave her convent for the gay world, which her parents promised she should immediately enter. And Hugh and Fleda had too lively a spring of happiness within themselves to care where its outgoings should be.

So home they came, in good mood, bringing with them. all manner of Parisian delights that Paris could part with. Furniture, that at home at least they might forget where they were; dresses, that at home or abroad nobody might forget where they had been; pictures and statuary and engravings and books, to satisfy a taste really strong and well cultivated. And indeed the other items were quite as much for this purpose as for any other. A French cook for Mr. Rossitur, and even Rosaline for his wife, who declared she was worth all the rest of Paris. Hugh cared little for any of these things; he brought home a treasure of books and a flute, to which he was devoted. Fleda cared for them all, even Monsieur Emile and Rosaline, for her uncle's and aunt's sake; but her special joy was a beautiful little King Charles which had been sent her by Mr. Carleton a

few weeks before. It came with the kindest of letters, saying that some matters had made it inexpedient for him to pass through Paris on his way home but that he hoped nevertheless to see her soon. That intimation was the only thing that made Fleda sorry to leave Paris. The little dog was a beauty, allowed to be so not only by his mistress but by every one else; of the true black and tan colours; and Fleda's dearly loved and constant companion.

The life she and Hugh led was little changed by the change of place. They went out and came in as they had done in Paris, and took the same quiet but intense happiness in the same quiet occupations and pleasures; only the Tuileries and Champs Elysées had a miserable substitute in the Battery, and no substitute at all anywhere else. And the pleasant drives in the environs of Paris were missed too and had nothing in New York to supply their place. Mrs. Rossitur always said it was impossible to get out of New York by land, and not worth the trouble to do it by water. But then in the house Fleda thought there was a great gain. The dirty Parisian Hotel was well exchanged for the bright clean well-appointed house in State street. And if Broadway was disagreeable, and the Park a weariness to the eyes, after the dressed gardens of the French capital, Hugh and Fleda made it up in the delights of the luxuriously furnished library and the dear at-home feeling of having the whole house their own.

They were left, those two children, quite as much to themselves as ever. Marion was going into company, and she and her mother were swallowed up in the consequent necessary calls upon their time. Marion never had been anything to Fleda. She was a fine handsome girl, outwardly, but seemed to have more of her father than her mother in her composition, though colder-natured and more wrapped up in self than Mr. Rossitur would be called by anybody that knew him. She had never done anything to draw Fleda towards her, and even Hugh had very little of her attention. They did not miss it. They were everything to each other.

Everything, for now morning and night there was a sort of whirlwind in the house which carried the mother and daughter round and round and permitted no rest; and Mr.

Rossitur himself was drawn in. It was worse than it had been in Paris. There, with Marion in her convent, there were often evenings when they did not go abroad nor receive company and spent the time quietly and happily in each other's society. No such evenings now; if by chance there were an unoccupied one Mrs. Rossitur and her daughter were sure to be tired and Mr. Rossitur busy.

Hugh and Fleda in those bustling times retreated to the library; Mr. Rossitur would rarely have that invaded; and while the net was so eagerly cast for pleasure among the gay company below, pleasure had often slipped away and hid herself among the things on the library table, and was dancing on every page of Hugh's book and minding each stroke of Fleda's pencil and cocking the spaniel's ears whenever his mistress looked at him. King, the spaniel, lay on a silk cushion on the library table, his nose just touching Fleda's fingers. Fleda's drawing was mere amusement; she and Hugh were not so burthened with studies that they had not always their evenings free, and to tell truth, much more than their evenings. Masters indeed they had; but the heads of the house were busy with the interests of their grown-up child, and perhaps with other interests; and took it for granted that all was going right with the young ones. "Haven't we a great deal better time than they have down stairs, Fleda?" said Hugh one of these evenings.

"Hum-yes-" answered Fleda abstractedly, stroking into order some old man in her drawing with great intentness. King!—you rascal-keep back and be quiet, sir!---” Nothing could be conceived more gentle and loving than Fleda's tone of fault-finding, and her repulse only fell short of a caress.

Why don't you let him!"

"Because I don't choose to-a silk cushion is good enough for his majesty. King!—" (laying her soft cheek against the little dog's soft head and forsaking her drawing for the purpose.)

"How you do love that dog!" said Hugh.

"Very well-why shouldn't I?-provided he steals no love from anybody else," said Fleda, still caressing him.

"What a noise somebody is making down stairs!" said Hugh. "I don't think I should ever want to go to large parties, Fleda, do you?"

"I don't know," said Fleda, whose natural taste for society was strongly developed;"it would depend upon what kind of parties they were.

"I shouldn't like them, I know, of whatever kind,” said Hugh. "What are you smiling at?"

"Only Mr. Pickwick's face, that I am drawing here." Hugh came round to look and laugh, and then began again.

“I can't think of anything pleasanter than this room as we are now.'

“You should have seen Mr. Carleton's library," said Fleda in a musing tone, going on with her drawing. "Was it so much better than this ?"

Fleda's eyes gave a slight glance at the room and then looked down again with a little shake of her head sufficiently expressive.

64

Well,” said Hugh, “you and I do not want any better than this, do we, Fleda ?"

Fleda's smile, a most satisfactory one, was divided between him and King.

"I don't believe," said Hugh, said Hugh, "you would have loved that dog near so well if anybody else had given him to you."

"I don't believe I should!-not a quarter," said Fleda with sufficient distinctness.

"I never liked that Mr. Carleton as well as you did.” "That is because you did not know him," said Fleda quietly.

"Do you think he was a good man, Fleda ?"

"He was very good to me," said Fleda, "always. What rides I did have on that great black horse of his !”. "A black horse ?"

Yes, a great black horse, strong, but so gentle, and he went so delightfully. His name was Harold. Oh I should like to see that horse!-When I wasn't with him, Mr. Carleton used to ride another, the greatest beauty of a horse, Hugh; a brown Arabian-so slender and delicate-her name was Zephyr, and she used to go like the wind to