The Old Things

X.

FLEDA’S line had been taken, her word was quite ready; on the terrace there, by the painted pots, she broke out before her interlocutress could put a question : “ His errand was perfectly simple: he came to demand that you shall pack everything straight up again and send it back as fast as the railway will carry it.”

The back road had apparently been fatiguing to Mrs, Gereth; she stood there rather white and wan with her walk. A certain sharp thinness was in her ejaculation of “ Oh ! ” — after which she glanced about her for a place to sit down. The movement was a criticism of the order of events that offered such a piece of news to a lady coming in tired; but Fleda could see that in turning over the possibilities, this particular peril, during the last hour, was the one her friend had turned up oftenest. At the end of the short, gray day, which had been moist and mild, the sun was out; the terrace looked to the south, and a bench, formed as to legs and arms of iron representing knotted boughs, stood against the warmest wall of the house. The mistress of Ricks sank upon it, and presented to her companion the handsome face she had composed to hear everything. Strangely enough, it was just this fine vessel of her attention that made the girl most nervous about what she must drop into it. “ Quite a ‘ demand,’dear, is it?” asked Mrs. Gereth, drawing in her cloak.

“ Oh, that’s wliat I should call it! ” Fleda laughed, to her own surprise.

“ I mean with the threat of enforcement, and that sort of thing.”

“ Distinctly with the threat of enforcement, — what would be called, I suppose, coercion.”

“ What sort of coercion ? ” said Mrs. Gereth.

“ Why, legal, don’t you know ? — what he calls setting the lawyers at you.”

“Is that what he calls it?” She seemed to speak with disinterested curiosity.

“ That’s what he calls it,” said Fleda.

Mrs. Gereth considered an instant. “Oh, the lawyers!” she exclaimed lightly. Seated there almost cosily in the reddening winter sunset, only with her shoulders raised a little and her mantle tightened as if from a slight chill, she had never yet looked to Fleda so much in possession, nor so far from meeting unsuspectedness halfway. “ Is he going to send them down here ? ”

“ I dare say he thinks it may come to that.”

“ The lawyers can scarcely do the packing,” Mrs. Gereth humorously remarked.

“ I suppose he means them — in the first place, at least — to try to talk you over.”

“ In the first place, eh ? And what does he mean in the second ? ”

Fleda hesitated ; she had not foreseen that so simple an inquiry could disconcert her. “ I’m afraid I don’t know.”

“ Did n’t you ask ? ” Mrs. Gereth spoke as if she might have said, “ What then were you doing all the while ? ”

“I didn’t ask very much,” said her companion. “ He has been gone some time. The great thing seemed to be to understand clearly that he would n’t be content with anything less than what he said.”

“ My just giving everything back ? ”

“ Your just giving everything back.”

“ Well, darling, what did you tell him?” Mrs. Gereth blandly inquired.

Fleda faltered again, wincing at the term of endearment, at what the words took for granted, charged with the confidence she had now committed herself to betray. “ I told him I would tell you ! ” She smiled, but she felt that her smile was rather hollow, and even that Mrs. Gereth had begun to look at her with some fixedness.

“ Did he seem very angry ? ”

“ He seemed very sad. He takes it very hard,” Fleda added.

“ And how does she take it? ”

“Ah, that — that I felt a delicacy about asking.”

“ So you did n’t ask ? ” The words had the note of surprise.

Fleda was embarrassed ; she had not made up her mind definitely to lie. “ I didn’t think you’d care.” That small untruth she would risk.

“Well — I don’t!” Mrs. Gereth declared ; and Fleda felt less guilty to hear her, for the statement was as inexact as her own. “ Did n’t you say anything on your own side ? ” Mrs. Gereth presently continued.

“ Do you mean in the way of justifying you ? ”

“ I did n’t mean to trouble you to do that. My justification,” said Mrs. Gereth. sitting there warmly, and, in the lucidity of her thought, which nevertheless hung back a little, dropping her eyes on the gravel, — “my justification was all the past. My justification was the cruelty ” — But at this, with a short, sharp gesture, she checked herself. “It’s too good of me to talk — now.” She produced these sentences with a cold patience, as if addressing Fleda in the girl’s virtual character, for the moment, of Owen’s representative. Our young lady crept to and fro before the bench, combating the sense that it was occupied by a judge, looking at her boottoes, reminding herself of Mona, and lightly crunching the pebbles as she walked. She moved about because she was afraid, putting off from moment to moment the exercise of the courage she had been sure she possessed. That courage would all come to her if she could only be equally sure that what she should be called upon to do for Owen would be to suffer. She had wondered, while Mrs. Gereth spoke, how that lady would describe her justification. She had described it as if to be irreproachably fair, give her adversary the benefit of every doubt, and then dismiss the question forever. “ Of course,” Mrs. Gereth went on, “if we did n’t succeed in showing him at Poynton the ground we took, it’s simply that he shuts his eyes. What I supposed was, that you, would have given him your opinion that if I was the woman so signally to assert myself, I m also the woman to rest upon it imperturbably enough.”

Fleda stopped in front of her hostess. “ I gave him my opinion that you ’re very logical, very obstinate, and very proud.”

“ Quite right, my dear: I’m a rank bigot — about that sort of thing!” and Mrs. Gereth jerked her head at the contents of the house. “ I’ve never denied it. I’d kidnap — to save them, to convert them — the children of heretics. When I know I ’m right I go to the stake. Oh, he may burn me alive! ” she cried, with a happy face. “ Did he abuse me ? ” she then demanded.

Fleda had remained there, gathering purpose. “ How little you know him ! ” Mrs. Gereth stared, then broke into a laugh that her companion had not expected. “ Ah. my dear, certainly not so well as you ! ” The girl, at this, turned away again, — she felt she looked too conscious : and she was aware that, during a pause, Mrs. Gereth’s eyes watched her as she went. She faced about afresh to meet them, but what she met was the question, “ Why had you a ‘ delicacy ’ as to speaking of Mona? ”

She stopped again before the bench, and an inspiration came to her. “ I should think you, would know,” she said, with much dignity.

Blankness was for a moment on Mrs. Gereth’s brow ; then light broke, — she visibly remembered the scene in the breakfast-room after Mona’s night at Poynton. “ Because I compared you, — told him you were the one?” Her eyes looked deep. “ You were, — you are still! ”

Fleda gave a bold, dramatic laugh. “ Thank you, my love, — with all the best things at Ricks ! ”

Mrs. Gereth considered, trying to penetrate, as it seemed ; but at last she brought out roundly, “ For you, you know, I ’d fend them back ! ”

The girl’s heart gave a tremendous bound ; the right way dawned upon her in a flash. Obscurity, indeed, the next moment engulfed this course, but for a few thrilled seconds she had understood. To send the things back “ for her ” meant, of course, to send them back if there were even a dim chance that she might become mistress of them. Fleda’s palpitation was not allayed as she asked herself what portent Mrs. Gereth had suddenly perceived of such a chance: that perception could come only from a sudden suspicion of her secret. This suspicion, in turn, was a tolerably straight consequence of that implied view of the propriety of surrender from which, she was well aware, she could say nothing to dissociate herself. What she first felt was, that, if she wished to save the spoils, she wished also to save her secret. So she looked as innocent as she could, and said as quickly as possible, "For me? Why in the world for me ? ”

“ Because you ’re so awfully keen.”

“ Am I ? Do I strike you so ? You know I hate him,” Fleda went on.

She had the sense for a while of Mrs. Gereth’s regarding her with the detachment of some stern, clever stranger. “ Then what’s the matter with you ? Why do you want me to give in? ”

Fleda hesitated ; she felt herself reddening. “ I’ve only said your son wants it. I have n’t said I do.”

“ Then say it and have done with it! ”

This was more peremptory than any word her friend, though often speaking in her presence with much point, had ever yet directly addressed to her. It affected her like the crack of a whip, but she confined herself, with an effort, to taking it as a reminder that she must keep her head. “ I know he has his engagement to carry out.”

“ His engagement to marry? Why, it’s just that engagement we loathe ! ”

“Why should I loathe it?” Fleda asked, with a smile. Then, before Mrs. Gereth could reply, she pursued, “I’m thinking of his general undertaking, — to give her the house as she originally saw it.”

“ To give her the house ! ” Mrs. Gereth brought up the words from the depth of the unspeakable. The effort was like the moan of an autumn wind; it was in the power of such an image to make her turn pale.

“ I’m thinking,” Fleda continued, “ of the simple question of his keeping faith on an important clause of his contract: it does n’t matter whether it’s with a stupid girl or not. I ’m thinking of his honor and his good name.”

“ The honor and good name of a man you hate ? ”

“ Certainly,” the girl resolutely answered. “ I don’t see why you should talk as if one had a petty mind. You don’t think so ; it’s not on that assumption you’ve ever dealt with me. I can do your son justice, as he put his case to me.”

“ Ah, then he did put his case to you ! ” Mrs. Gereth exclaimed, with an accent of triumph. “ You seemed to speak just now as if really nothing of any consequence had passed between you.”

“ Something always passes when one has a little imagination,” our young lady declared.

“ I take it you don’t mean that Owen has ! ” cried Mrs. Gereth, with her large laugh.

Fleda was silent a moment. “ No, I don’t mean that Owen has,” she returned at last.

“ Why is it you hate him so ? ” her hostess abruptly inquired.

“ Should I love him for all he has made you suffer ? ”

Mrs. Gereth slowly rose at this, and, coming across the walk, took her young friend in her arms and kissed her. She then passed into one of Fleda’s an arm perversely sociable. “ Let us move a little,” she said, holding her close and giving a slight shiver. They strolled along the terrace, and she brought out another question : "He was eloquent, then, poor dear, — he poured forth the story of his wrongs ? ”

Fleda smiled down at her companion, who, cloaked and perceptibly bowed, leaned on her heavily, and gave her an odd, unwonted sense of age and cunning. She took refuge in an evasion. “ He could n’t tell me anything that I did n’t know pretty well already.”

“ It’s very true that you know everything. No, dear, you have n’t a petty mind ; you’ve a lovely imagination, and you ’re the nicest creature in the world. If you were stupid, like most girls, — like every one, in fact, — I would have insulted you, I would have outraged you, and you would have fled from me in terror. No, now that I think of it,” Mrs. Gereth went on, “ you would n’t have fled from me ; nothing, on the contrary, would have made you budge. You would have cuddled into your warm corner, but you would have been wounded and weeping and martyrized, and you would have taken every opportunity to tell people I’m a brute, — as I should have been ! ” They went to and fro, and she would not allow Fleda, who laughed and protested, to attenuate with any light civility this funny picture. She praised her cleverness and her patience, and said it was getting cold and dark and they must go in to tea. She delayed quitting the place, however, and reverted instead to Owen’s ultimatum, about which she asked another question or two; in particular whether it had struck Fleda that he really believed she would comply with such a summons.

“ I think he really believes that if I try hard enough I can make yon : ” after uttering which words our young lady stopped short and emulated the embrace she had received a few moments before.

“ And you’ve promised to try : I see. You did n’t tell me that, either,” Mrs. Gereth added, as they went on. “ But you ’re rascal enough for anything ! ” While Fleda was occupied in thinking in what terms she could explain why she had indeed been rascal enough for the reticence thus denounced, her companion broke out with an inquiry somewhat irrelevant, and even, in form, somewhat profane. “ Why the devil, at any rate, does n’t it come off ? ”

Fleda hesitated. “ You mean their marriage ? ”

“ Of course I mean their marriage ! ”

Fleda hesitated again. “ I have n’t the least idea.”

“You did n’t ask him? ”

“ Oh, how in the world can you fancy ? ” She spoke in a shocked tone.

“ Fancy your putting a question so indelicate? I should have put it, — I mean in your place; but I ’m quite coarse, thank God ! ” Fleda felt, privately, that she herself was coarse, or at any rate would presently have to be; and Mrs. Gereth, with a purpose that struck the girl as gathering, continued : “ What, then, was the day to be ? Was n’t it one of these ? ”

“ I ’m sure I don’t remember.”

It was part of the great rupture and an effect of Mrs. Gereth’s character that, up to this moment, she had been completely and haughtily indifferent to that detail. Now, however, she had a visible reason for being clear about it. She bethought herself, and she broke out, “ Is n’t the day past ? ” Then, Stopping short, she added, "Upon my word, they must have put it off ! ” As Fleda made no answer to this, she sharply went on, “ Have they put it off ? ”

“ I have n’t the least idea,” said the girl.

Her hostess was looking at her hard again. “ Did n’t he tell you, — did n’t he say anything about it ? ”

Fleda, meanwhile, had had time to make her reflections, which were, moreover, the continued throb of those that had occupied the interval between Owen’s departure and his mother’s return. If she should now repeat his words, that would n’t at all play the game of her definite vow; it would only play the game of her little gagged and blinded desire. She could calculate well enough the effect of telling Mrs. Gereth how she had had it from Owen’s troubled lips that Mona was only waiting for the restitution, and would do nothing without it. The thing was to obtain the restitution without imparting that knowledge. The only way, also, not to impart it was not to tell any truth at all about it; and the only way to meet this last condition was to reply to her companion, as she presently did, “ He told me nothing whatever : he did n’t touch on the subject.”

“ Not in any way ? ”

“ Not in any way.”

Mrs. Gereth watched Fleda and considered. “ You have n’t any idea if they are waiting for the things ? ”

“How should I have? I’m not in their counsels.”

“ I dare say they are, — or that Mona is.” Mrs. Gereth reflected again ; she had a bright idea. "If I don’t give in, she ’ll break off.”

“ She ’ll never, never break off ! ” said Fleda.

“ Are you sure ? ”

“ I can’t be sure, but it’s my belief.”

“ Derived from him ? ”

The girl hung fire a few seconds. “ Derived from him.”

Mrs. Gereth gave her a long last look, then turned abruptly away. “It’s an awful bore you did n’t really get it out of him ! Well, come to tea,” she added rather dryly, passing straight into the house.

XI.

The sense of her adversary’s dryness, which was ominous of something she could n’t read, made Fleda, before complying, linger a little on the terrace; she felt the need, moreover, of taking breath after such a flight into the cold air of denial. When at last she rejoined Mrs. Gereth, she found her erect before the drawing-room fire. Their tea had been set out in the same quarter, and the mistress of the house, for whom the preparation of it was in general a high and undelegated function, was in an attitude to which the hissing urn made no appeal. This omission, for Fleda, was such a further sign of something to come that, to disguise her apprehension, she immediately and without an apology took the duty in hand; only, however, to be promptly reminded that she was performing it confusedly, and not counting the journeys of the little silver shovel she emptied into the pot. “ Not five, my dear, — the usual three,” said her hostess, with the same dryness; watching her then in silence while she clumsily corrected her mistake. The tea took some minutes to draw, and Mrs. Gereth availed herself of them suddenly to exclaim, “ You have n’t yet told me, you know, how it is you propose to ‘ make ’ me ! ”

“ Give everything back ?” Fleda looked into the pot again, and uttered her question with a briskness that she felt to he a little overdone. “ Why, by putting the question well before you ; by being so eloquent that I shall persuade you, shall act upon you ; by making you sorry for having gone so far,” she said boldly ; “ by simply and earnestly asking it of you, in short; and by reminding you at the same time that it’s the first thing I ever have so asked. Oh, you’ve done things for me, — endless and beautiful things,” she exclaimed ; “ but you ’ve done them all from your own generous impulse. I’ve never so much as hinted to you to lend me a postage-stamp.”

“ Give me a cup of tea,” said Mrs. Gereth. A moment later, taking the cup, she replied, “ No, you’ve never asked me for a postage-stamp.”

“ That gives me a pull! ” Fleda returned, smiling.

“ Puts you in the situation of expecting that I shall do this thing just simply to oblige you ? ”

The girl hesitated. "You said a while ago that for me you would do it.”

“ For you, but not for your eloquence. Do you understand what I mean by the difference ? ” Mrs. Gereth asked, as she stood stirring her tea.

Fleda, to postpone answering, looked round, while she drank it, at the beautiful room. “ I don’t in the least like, you know, your having taken so much. It was a great shock to me, on my arrival here, to find you had done so.”

“ Give me some more tea,” said Mrs. Gereth ; and there was a moment’s silence as Fleda poured out another cup. “ If you were shocked, my dear, I’m bound to say you concealed your shock.”

“ I know I did. I was afraid to show it.”

Mrs. Gereth drank off her second cup. “ And you ’re not afraid now ? ”

“ No, I’m not afraid now.”

“ What has made the difference ? ”

“ I’ve pulled myself together.” Fleda paused ; then she added, “ And I’ve seen Mr. Owen.”

“ You’ve seen Mr. Owen ? ” said Mrs. Gereth. She put down her cup, and sank into a chair, in which she leaned back, resting her head and gazing at her young friend. “Yes, I did tell you a while ago that for you I’d do it. But you have n’t told me yet what you ’ll do in return.”

Fleda thought an instant. “ Anything in the wide world you may require.”

“ Oh, ‘ anything ’ is nothing at all! That’s too easily said.” Mrs. Gereth, reclining more completely, closed her eyes with an air of disgust, an air indeed of inviting slumber.

Fleda looked at her quiet face, which the appearance of slumber always made particularly handsome; she noted how much the ordeal of the last few weeks had added to its indications of age. “ Well, then, try me with something. What is it you demand ? ”

At this, Mrs. Gereth, opening her eyes, sprang straight up. “ Get him away from her! ”

Fleda marveled: her companion had in an instant become young again. “ Away from Mona ? How in the world ” —

“ By not looking like a fool! ” cried Mrs. Gereth very sharply. She kissed her, however, on the spot, to make up for this roughness, and summarily took off her hat, which, on coming into the house, our young lady had not removed. She applied a friendly touch to the girl’s hair and gave a businesslike pull to her jacket. “ I say, don’t look like an idiot, because you happen not to be one, not the least bit. I’m idiotic ; I’ve been so, I’ve just discovered, ever since our first days together. I ’ve been a precious donkey ; but that’s another affair.”

Fleda, as if she humbly assented, went through no form of controverting this; she simply stood passive to her companion’s sudden refreshment of her appearance. “ How can I get him away from her ? ” she presently demanded.

“ By letting yourself go.”

“ By letting myself go ? ” She spoke mechanically, still more like an idiot, and felt as if her face flamed out the insincerity of her question. It was vividly back again, the vision of the real way to act upon Mrs. Gereth. This lady’s movements were now rapid ; she turned off from her as quickly as she had seized her, and Fleda sat down to steady herself for full responsibility.

Her hostess, without taking up her ejaculation, gave a violent poke at the fire, and then faced her again. “ You ’ve done two things, then, to-day — have n’t you ? — that you’ve never done before. One has been asking me the service, or favor, or concession, — whatever you call it, — that you just mentioned ; the other has been telling me — certainly, too, for the first time — an immense little fib.”

“ An immense little fib ? ” Fleda felt weak ; she was glad of the support of her seat.

“ An immense big one, then! ” said Mrs. Gereth irritatedly. “ You don’t in the least ‘ hate ’ Owen, my darling. You care for him very much. In fact, my own, you ’re in love with him — there ! Don’t tell me any more lies ! ” cried Mrs. Gereth, with a voice and a face in the presence of which Fleda recognized that there was nothing for her but to hold herself and take it. When once this was out, it was out, and she could see more and more every instant that it would be the only way. She took, therefore, what had to come ; she leaned back her head and closed her eyes as her companion had done just before. She would have covered her face with her hands but for the still greater shame. “ Oh, you’re a wonder, a wonder,” said Mrs. Gereth ; “ you ’re magnificent, and I was right, as soon as I saw you, to pick you out and trust you ! ” Fleda closed her eyes tighter at this last word, but her friend kept it up. “ I never dreamed of it till to-day, when, after he had come and gone, we were face to face. Then something stuck out of you ; it strongly impressed me, and I did n’t know at first quite what to make of it. It was that you had just been with him and that you were not natural. Not natural to me,” she added, with a smile. “ I pricked up my ears, and all that this might mean dawned upon me when you said you had asked nothing about Mona. It put me on the scent, but I did n’t show you, did 1 ? I felt it was in you, deep down, and that I must draw it out. Well, I have drawn it, and it’s a blessing. Yesterday, when you shed tears at breakfast, I was awfully puzzled. What has been the matter with you all the while ? Why, Fleda, it is n’t a crime, don’t you know that?” cried the delighted woman. “ When I was a girl I was always in love, and not always with such nice people as Owen. I did n’t behave as well as you ; compared with you, I think I must have been horrid. But if you ’re proud and reserved, it’s your own affair ; I’m proud, too, though I ’m not reserved, — that’s what spoils it. I ’m stupid, above all, — that’s what I am ; so dense that I really blush for it. However, no one but you could have deceived me. If I trusted you, moreover, it was exactly to be cleverer than myself. You must be so now more than ever ! ” Suddenly Fleda felt her hands grasped: Mrs. Gereth had plumped down at her feet and was leaning on her knees. “ Save him, — save him : you can ! ” she passionately pleaded. “ How could you not like him, when he’s such a dear ? He is a dear, darling ; there’s no harm in him! You can do what you will with him, — you know you can ! What else does he give us all this time for ? Get him away from her ; it’s as if he besought you to, poor wretch ! Don’t abandon him to such a fate, and I ’ll never abandon you. Think of him with that creature, that future ! If you ’ll take him, I ’ll give up everything. There, it’s a solemn promise, the most sacred of my life ! Get the better of her, and he shall have every stick I removed. Give me your word, and I ’ll accept it. I ’ll write for the packers to-night !”

Fleda, before this, had fallen forward on her companion’s neck, and the two women, clinging together, had finally got up, while the younger wailed on the other’s bosom. “You smooth it down because you see more in it than there can ever be ; but after my hideous double game how will you be able to believe in me again ? ”

“ I see in it simply what must be, if you’ve a single spark of pity. Where on earth was the double game, when you’ve behaved like such a saint ? You’ve been beautiful, you’ve been exquisite, and all our trouble is over.”

Fleda, drying her eyes, shook her head ever so sadly. “ No, Mrs. Gereth, it is n’t over. I can’t do what you ask, — I can’t meet your condition.”

Mrs. Gereth stared ; the cloud gathered in her face again. “ Why, in the name of goodness, when you adore him ? I know what you see in him,” she declared in another tone : “ you ’re right! ”

Fleda gave a faint, stubborn smile. “ He cares for her too much.”

“ Then why does n’t he marry her ? He ’s giving you an extraordinary chance! ”

“ He does n’t dream I’ve ever thought of him,” said Fleda. “ Why should he, if you did n’t ? ”

“ It was n’ t with me you were in love, my duck.” Then Mrs. Gereth added, “ I ’ll go and tell him.”

“ If you do any such thing, you shall never see me again, — literally never ! ”

Mrs. Gereth looked hard at her young friend, and showed that she saw she must believe her. “ Then you re perverse, you ’re wicked. Will you swear he does n’t know ? ”

“ Of course he does n’t know ! ” cried Fleda indignantly.

Her interlocutress was silent a little. “ And that he has no feeling on his side ? ”

“ For me ? ” Fleda stared. “ Before he has even married her ? ”

Mrs. Gereth gave a sharp laugh at this. “ He ought at least to appreciate your wit. Oh, my dear, you are a treasure ! Does n’t he appreciate anything ? Has he given you absolutely no symptom, — not looked a look, not breathed a sigh ? ”

“The case,” said Fleda coldly, “ is as I ’ve had the honor to state it.”

“ Then he ’s as big a donkey as his mother ! But you know you must account for their delay,” Mrs. Gereth remarked.

“ Why must I ? ” Fleda asked after a moment.

“ Because you were closeted with him here so long. You can’t pretend at present, you know, not to have any art.”

The girl hesitated an instant; she was conscious that she must choose between two risks. She had had a secret, and that was gone. Owen had one, which was still unbrnised, and the greater risk now was that his mother should lay her formidable hand upon it. All Fleda’s tenderness for him moved her to protect it; so she faced the smaller peril.

“ Their delay,” she brought herself to reply, “may perhaps be Mona’s doing. I mean because he has lost her the things.”

Mrs. Gereth jumped at this. “ So that she ’ll break altogether if I keep them ? ”

Fleda winced. “ I’ve told you what I believe about that. She ’ll make scenes and conditions ; she ’ll worry him. But she ’ll hold him fast ; she ’ll never give him up.”

Mrs. Gereth turned it over. “ Well, I ’ll keep them, to try her,” she finally pronounced ; at which Fleda felt quite sick, as if she had given everything and got nothing.

XII.

“ I must let him know, in common decency, that I’ve talked of the matter with you,” Fleda said to her hostess that evening. “ What answer do you wish me to write to him ? ”

“ Write to him that you must see him again,” said Mrs. Gereth.

Fleda looked very blank. “ What on earth am I to see him for? ”

“ For anything you like.”

The girl would have been struck with the levity of this had she not already, in an hour, felt the extent of the change suddenly wrought in her commerce with her friend, — wrought above all, to that friend’s view, in her relation to the great issue. The effect of what had followed Owen’s visit was to make that relation the very key of the crisis. Pressed upon her, goodness knew, the crisis had been, but it now seemed to put forth big, encircling arms, — arms that squeezed till they hurt and she must cry out. It was as if everything at Ricks had been poured into a common receptacle, a public ferment of emotion and zeal, out of which it was ladled up to be tasted and talked about; everything, at least, but the one little treasure of knowledge that she kept back. She ought to have liked this, she reflected, because it meant sympathy, meant a closer union with the source of so much in her life that had been beautiful and renovating ; but there were deep instincts in her that stood off. She had had — and it was not merely at this time — to recognize that there were things for which Mrs. Gereth’s flair was not so happy as for bargains and “ marks.” It would n’t be happy now as to the best action on the knowledge she had just gained ; yet as from this moment they were still more intimately together, a person so much in her debt would simply have to stand and meet what was to come. There were ways in which she could sharply incommode such a person, and not only with the best conscience in the world, but with a sort of brutality of good intentions. One of the straightest of these strokes, Fleda saw, would be the dance of delight over the mystery Mrs. Gereth had laid bare, — the loud, lawful, tactless joy of the explorer leaping upon the strand. Like any other lucky discoverer, she would take possession of the fortunate island. She was nothing if not practical : almost the only thing she took account of in her young friend’s ineffable secret was the excellent use she could make of it, — a use so much to her taste that she refused to acknowledge a hindrance. Fleda put into Mrs. Gereth’s answer to her question a good deal more meaning than it would have occurred to her a few hours before that she was prepared to put, but she had on the spot a foreboding that even so broad a hint would live to be bettered.

“ Do you suggest that I propose to him to come down here again ? ” she presently inquired.

“ Dear, no ; say that you ’ll go up to town and meet him.’ It was bettered, the broad hint; and Fleda felt this to be still more the case when, returning to the subject before they went to bed, her companion said : “ I make him over to you wholly, you know, — to do what you please with. Deal with him in your own way, — I ask no questions. All I ask is that you succeed.”

“ That’s charming,” Fleda replied, "but it does n’t tell me a bit, you ’ll be so good as to consider, in what terms to write to him. It’s not an answer from you to the message I was to give you.”

“ The answer to his message is perfectly distinct: he shall have everything the minute he ’ll say he ’ll marry you.

“You really pretend,” Fleda asked, “ to think me capable of transmitting him that news ? ”

“ What else can I really pretend when you threaten so to cast me off if I speak the word myself ? ”

“ Oh, if you speak the word! ” the girl murmured very gravely, but happy, at least, to know that in this direction Mrs. Gereth confessed herself warned and helpless. Then she added : “ How can I go on living with you on a footing of which I so deeply disapprove ? Thinking as I do that you’ve despoiled him far more than is just or merciful, — for if I expected you to take something, I did n’t in the least expect you to take everything, — how can I stay here without a sense that I’m backing you up in your cruelty, and participating in your illgotten gains ? ” Fleda was determined that if she had the chill of her exposed and investigated state, she would also have the convenience of it, and that if Mrs. Gereth popped in and out of the chamber of her soul, she would at least return the freedom. “ I shall quite hate, you know, in a day or two, every object that surrounds you, — become blind to all the beauty and rarity that I formerly delighted in. Don’t think me harsh; there ’s no use in my not being frank now. If I leave you, everything’s at an end.”

Mrs. Gereth, however, was imperturbable. Fleda had to recognize that her advantage had become too real. “It’s too beautiful, the way you care for him ; it’s music in my ears. Nothing else but such a passion could make you say such things ; that’s the way I should have been, too, my dear. Why did n’t you tell me sooner ? I’d have gone right in for you; I never would have moved a candlestick. Don’t stay with me if it torments you; don’t, if you suffer, be where you see the old rubbish. Go up to town, — go back for a little to your father’s. It need be only for a little; two or three weeks will see us through. Your father will take you in a moment, if you only will make him understand what it’s a question of, — of your getting yourself off his hands forever. I ‘11 make him understand, you know, if you feel shy. I’d take you up myself, I ’d go with you, to spare your being bored; we ’d put up at a hotel, and we might amuse ourselves a bit. We have n’t had much pleasure since we met, have we ? But of Course that would n’t suit our book. I should be a bugaboo to Owen, — I should be fatally in the way. Your chance is there, — your chance is to be alone ; for God ’s sake, use it to the right end. If you ’re in want of money, I’ve a little I can give you. But I ask no questions, — not a question as small as your shoe! ”

She asked no questions, but she took the most extraordinary things for granted. Fleda felt this still more at the end of a couple of days. On the second of these our young lady wrote to Owen ; her emotion had, to a certain degree, cleared itself, — there was something she could say briefly. If she had given everything to Mrs. Gereth, and as yet got nothing, she had, on the other hand, quickly reacted — it took but a night — against the discouragement of her first check. Her desire to serve him was too passionate, the sense that he counted upon her too sweet: these things caught her up again and gave her a new patience and a new subtlety. It should n’t really be for nothing that she had given so much ; deep within her burned again the resolve to get something back. So what she wrote to Owen was simply that she had had a great scene with his mother, but that he must be patient and give her time. It was difficult, as they both had expected, but she was working her hardest for him. She had made an impression, — she would do everything to follow it up. Meanwhile, he must keep intensely quiet and take no other steps ; he must only trust her, and pray for her, and believe in her perfect loyalty. She made no allusion whatever to Mona’s attitude, nor to his not being, as regarded that young lady, master of the situation ; but she said in a postscript, in reference to his mother, “ Of course she wonders a good deal why your marriage does n’t take place.” Atter the letter was gone, she regretted having used the word “loyalty;” there were two or three milder terms which she might as well have employed. The answer she immediately received from Owen was a little note, of which she met all the deficiencies by describing it to herself as pathetically simple, but which, to prove that Mrs. Gereth might ask as many questions as she liked, she at once made his mother read. He had no art with his pen, he had not even a good hand, and his letter, a short profession of friendly confidence, consisted of but a few familiar and colorless words of acknowledgment and assent. The gist of it was that he would certainly, since Miss Vetch recommended it, not hurry mamma too much. He would not for the present cause her to be approached by any one else, but he would, nevertheless, continue to hope that she would see she must come round. “ Of course, you know,”he added, "she can’t keep me waiting indefinitely. Please give her my love, and tell her that. If it can be done peaceably, I know you ’re just the one to do it.”

Fleda had awaited his rejoinder in deep suspense; such was her imagination of the possibility of his having, as she tacitly phrased it, let himself go on paper that when it arrived she was at first almost afraid to open it. There was indeed a distinct danger, for if he should write her love-letters the whole chance of aiding him would drop : she would have to return them, she would have to decline all further communication with him ; it would be quite the end of the business. This imagination of Fleda’s was a faculty that easily embraced all the heights and depths and extremities of things ; that made a single mouthful, in particular, of any tragic or desperate necessity. She was just a trifle disappointed at first, perhaps, at not finding in the note in question a syllable that strayed from the text ; but the next moment she had risen to a point of view from which it presented itself as a production almost inspired in its simplicity. It was simple even for Owen, and she wondered what had put it into his head to be more so than usual. Then she saw how natures that are right just do the things that are right. He was n’t clever, — his manner of writing showed it; but the cleverest man in England couldn’t have had more the instinct that, under the circumstances, was the supremely happy one, the instinct of giving her something that would do beautifully to be shown to Mrs. Gereth. This was a kind of divination, for naturally he could n’t know the line Mrs. Gereth was taking. It was furthermore explained — and that was the most touching part of all — by his wish that she herself should notice how awfully well he was behaving. His very bareness called her attention to his virtue ; and these were the exact fruits of her beautiful and terrible admonition. He was cleaving to Mona; he was doing his duty; he was making tremendously sure he should be without reproach.

If Fleda handed this communication to her friend as a triumphant gage of the innocence of the young man’s heart, her elation lived but a moment after Mrs. Gereth had pounced upon the telltale spot in it. “ Why in the world, then,” that lady cried, “ does he still not breathe a breath about the day, the day, the DAY? ” She repeated the word with a crescendo of superior acuteness; she proclaimed that nothing could be more marked than its absence, — an absence that simply spoke volumes. What did it prove, in fine, but that she was producing the effect she had toiled for, — that she had settled or was rapidly settling Mona ?

Such a challenge Fleda was obliged in some manner to take up. “ You may be settling Mona,” she returned, with a smile, “ but I can hardly regard it as sufficient evidence that you are settling Mona’s lover.”

“ Why not, with such a studied omission on his part to gloss over in any manner the painful tension existing between them, — the painful tension that, under Providence, I ’ve been the means of bringing about ? He gives you by his silence clear notice that his marriage is practically off.”

“ He speaks to me of the only thing that concerns me. He gives me clear notice that he abates not one jot of his demand.”

“Well, then, let him take the only way to get it satisfied.’

Fleda had no need to ask again what such a way might be, nor was her support removed by the fine assurance with which Mrs. Gereth could make her argument wait upon her wish. These days, which dragged their length into a strange, uncomfortable fortnight, had already borne more testimony to that element than all the other time the two women had passed together. Our young lady had been at first far from seeing the whole of a feature that Owen himself would probably have described as her companion’s “ cheek.” She lived now in a kind of bath of boldness, felt as if a fierce light poured in upon her from windows opened wide ; and the singular part of the ordeal was that she couldn’t protest against it fully without incurring, even to her own mind, some reproach of ingratitude, some charge of smallness. If Mrs. Gereth’s apparent determination to hustle her into Owen’s arms was accompanied with an air of holding her dignity rather cheap, this was, after all, only as a consequence of her being held in respect to some other attributes rather dear. It was a new version of the old story of being kicked upstairs. The wonderful woman was the same woman who, in the summer, at Poynton, had been so puzzled to conceive why a goodnatured girl should n’t have contributed more to the rout of the Brigstocks, — shouldn’t have been grateful even for the handsome puff of Fleda Vetch. Only her passion was keener now, and her scruple more absent: the fight made a demand upon her, and her pugnacity had become one with her constant habit of using such weapons as she could pick up. She had no imagination about anybody’s life save on the side she bumped against. Fleda was quite aware that she would have otherwise been a rare creature ; but a rare creature was originally just what she had struck her as being, Mrs. Gereth had really no perception of anybody’s nature, — had only one question about persons: were they clever or stupid ? To be clever meant to know the marks. Fleda knew them by direct inspiration, and a warm recognition of this had been her friend’s tribute to her character. The girl had hours, now, of sombre wishing that she might never see anything good again ; that kind of experience was evidently not an infallible source of peace. She would be more at peace in some vulgar little place that should owe its cachet to Tottenham Court Road. There were nice, horrible things in West Kensington ; it was as if they beckoned her and wooed her back to them. She had a relaxed recollection of Waterbath; and of her reasons for staying on at Ricks the force was rapidly ebbing. One of these was her pledge to Owen, — her vow to press his mother close; the other was the fact that of the two discomforts, that of being prodded by Mrs. Gereth and that of appearing to run after somebody else, the former remained for a while the more endurable.

As the days passed, however, it became plainer to Fleda that her only chance of success would be in lending herself to that low appearance. Then, moreover, at last, her nerves settling the question, the choice was simply imposed by the violence done to her taste, — to whatever was left of that high principle, at least, after the free and reckless meeting, for months, of great drafts and appeals. It was all very well to try to evade discussion. Owen Gereth was looking to her for a struggle, and it wasn’t a bit of a struggle to be disgusted and dumb. She was on too strange a footing, — that of having presented an ultimatum and having had it torn up in her face. In such a case as that the envoy always departed ; he never sat gaping and dawdling before the city. Mrs. Gereth, every morning, looked publicly into The Morning Post, the only newspaper she received : and every morning she treated the blankness of that journal as fresh evidence that everything was “ off.” What did the Post exist for but to tell you your son was wretchedly married? — so that if such a source of misery was dry, what could you do but infer that for once you had miraculously escaped ? She almost taunted Fleda with supineness in not getting something out of somebody, — in the same breath, indeed, in which she drenched her with a kind of appreciation more onerous to the girl than blame. Mrs. Gereth herself had of course washed her hands of the matter; but Fleda knew people who knew Mona, and would be sure to be in her confidence, — inconceivable people who admired her and had the privilege of Waterbath. What was the use, therefore, of being the most natural and the easiest of letterwriters, if no sort of side-light — in some pretext for correspondence — was, by a brilliant creature, to be got out of such barbarians? Fleda was not only a brilliant creature, but she heard herself commended, in these days, for new and strange attractions ; she figured suddenly, in the queer conversations of Ricks, as a distinguished, almost as a dangerous beauty. That retouching of her hair and dress in which her friend had impulsively indulged on a first glimpse of her secret was, by implication, very frequently repeated. She had the sense not only of being advertised and offered, but of being counseled and enlightened in ways that she scarcely understood, — arts obscure even to a poor girl who had had, in good society and motherless poverty, to look straight at realities and fill out blanks.

These arts, when Mrs. Gereth’s spirits were high, were handled with a brave and cynical humor with which Fleda’s fancy could keep no step: they left our young lady wondering what on earth her companion wanted her to do. “ I want you to cut in ! ” — that was Mrs. Gereth’s familiar and comprehensive phrase for the course she prescribed. She challenged again and again Fleda’s picture, as she called it (though the sketch was too slight to deserve the name), of the indifference to which a prior attachment had committed the proprietor of Poynton. “ Do you mean to say that, Mona or no Mona, he could see you that way, day after day, and not have the ordinary feelings of a man ? ” This was the sort of interrogation to which Fleda was fitfully and irrelevantly treated. She had grown almost used to the refrain. “ Do you mean to say that when, the other day, one had quite made you over to him, the great gawk, and he was, on this very spot, utterly alone with you ” — The girl at this point never left any doubt of what she meant to say, but Mrs. Gereth could be trusted to break out in another place and at another time. At last Fleda wrote to her father that he must fake her in for a while ; and when, to her companion’s delight, she returned to London, that lady went with her to the station and wafted her on her way. The Morning Post had been delivered as they left the house, and Mrs. Gereth had brought it with her for the traveler, who never spent a penny on a newspaper. On the platform, however, when this young person was ticketed, labeled, and seated, she opened it at the window of the carriage, exclaiming as usual, after looking into it a moment, “ Nothing — nothing — nothing: don’t tell me! Every day that there was nothing was a nail in the coffin of the marriage. An instant later the train was off, but, moving quickly beside it, while Fleda leaned inscrutably forth, Mrs. Gereth grasped her friend’s hand and looked up with wonderful eyes. “ Only let yourself go, darling, — only let yourself go ! ”

XIII.

That she desired to ask no questions Mrs. Gereth conscientiously proved by closing her lips tight after Fleda had gone to London. No letter from Ricks arrived at West Kensington, and Fleda, with nothing to communicate that could be to the taste of either party, forbore to open a correspondence. If her heart had been less heavy, she might have been amused to perceive how much rope this reticence of Ricks seemed to signify to her that she could take. She had, at all events, no good news for her friend save in the sense that her silence was not bad news. She was not yet in a position to write that she had “ cut in ; ” but neither, on the other hand, had she gathered material for announcing that Mona was undisseverable from her prey. She had made no use of the pen so glorified by Mrs. Gereth to wake up the echoes of Waterbath ; she had sedulously abstained from inquiring what in any quarter, far or near, was said, or suggested, or supposed. She only spent a daily penny on The Morning Post; she only saw, on each occasion, that that inspired sheet had as little to say about the imminence as about the abandonment of certain nuptials. It was at the same time obvious that Mrs. Gereth, on these occasions, triumphed much more than she trembled, and that with a few such triumphs repeated she would cease to tremble at all. What was most manifest, however, was that she had had a rare preconception of the circumstances that would have ministered, had Fleda been disposed, to the girl’s cutting in. It was brought home to Fleda that these circumstances would have particularly favored intervention; she was quickly forced to do them a secret justice. One of the effects of her intimacy with Mrs. Gereth was that she had quite lost all sense of intimacy with any one else. The lady of Ricks had made a desert around her, possessing and absorbing her so utterly that the others had fallen away. Had n’t she been admonished, months before, that people considered they had lost her, and were reconciled on the whole to the privation ? Her position, at present, in the great unconscious town, defined itself as obscure : she regarded it, at any rate, with eyes suspicious of that lesson. She neither wrote notes nor received them ; she indulged in no reminders nor knocked at any doors ; she wandered vaguely in the western wilderness, or cultivated shy forms of that “ household art ” for which she had had a respect before tasting the bitter tree of knowledge. Her only plan was to be as quiet as a mouse, and when she failed in the attempt to lose herself in the flat suburb she felt like a lonely fly crawling over a dusty chart.

How had Mrs. Gereth known in advance that if she had chosen to be “ vile ” (that was what Fleda called it) everything would happen to help her ? — especially the way her poor father, after breakfast, doddered off to his club, showing seventy when he was really fifty-five, and leaving her richly alone for the day. He came back about midnight, looking at her very hard and not risking long words, — only making her feel by inimitable touches that the presence of his family compelled him to alter all his hours. She had, in their common sitting-room, the company of the objects he was fond of saying that he had collected, — objects, shabby and battered, of a sort that appealed little to his daughter : old brandy-flasks and match-boxes, old calendars and handbooks, intermixed with an assortment of pen-wipers and ash-trays, a harvest he had gathered in from penny bazaars. He was blandly unconscious of that side of Fleda’s nature which had endeared her to Mrs. Gereth, and she had often heard him wish to goodness there was something nice she cared for. Why did n’t she try collecting something ? — it did n’t matter what. She would find it gave an interest to life, and there was no end of little curiosities one could easily pick up. He was conscious of having a taste for fine things which his children, unfortunately, had not inherited. This indicated the limits of their acquaintance with him, — limits which, as Fleda was now sharply aware, could only leave him to wonder what the devil she was there for. As she herself echoed this question to the letter, she was not in a position to clear up the mystery. She could n’t have given a name to her errand in town or explained it save by saying that she had had to get away from Ricks. It was intensely provisional, but what was to come next? Nothing could come next but a deeper anxiety. She had neither a home nor an outlook, — nothing in all the wide world but a feeling of suspense.

Of course she had her duty, — her duty to Owen, — a definite undertaking, reaffirmed, after his visit to Ricks, under her hand and seal; but there was no sense of possession attached to that; there was only a horrible sense of privation. She had quite moved from under Mrs. Gereth’s wide wing; and now that she was really among the pen-wipers and ash-trays, she was swept, at the thought of all the beauty she had forsworn, by short, wild gusts of despair. If her friend should really keep the spoils, she would never return to her. If that friend should, on the other hand, part with them, what on earth would there be to return to? The chill struck deep as Fleda thought of the mistress of Ricks reduced, in vulgar parlance, to what she had on her back: there was nothing to which she could compare such an image but her idea of Marie Antoinette in the Conciergerie, or perhaps the vision of some tropical bird, the creature of hot, dense forests, dropped on a frozen moor to pick up a living. The mind’s eye could see Mrs, Gereth, indeed, only in her thick, colored air ; it took all the light of her treasures to make her concrete and distinct. She loomed for a moment, in any mere house, gaunt and unnatural; then she vanished as if she had suddenly sunk into a quicksand. Fleda lost, herself in the rich fancy of how, if she were mistress of Poynton, a whole province should be assigned there, as a residence, to the splendid, august queen mother. She would have returned from her campaign with her baggagetrain and her loot, and the palace would unbar its shutters and the morning flash back from its halls. In the event of a surrender, the poor woman would never again be able to begin to collect: she was now too old and too moneyless, and times were altered and good things impossibly dear. A surrender, furthermore, to any daughter-in-law save an oddity like Mona need n’t at all be an abdication in fact ; any other fairly nice girl whom Owen should have taken it into his head to marry would have been positively glad to have, for the museum, a custodian who was a walking catalogue, and who understood beyond any one in England the hygiene and temperament of unique pieces. A fairly nice girl would somehow be away a good deal, and would at such times count it a blessing to feel Mrs. Gereth at her post.

Fleda had fully recognized, the first days, that, quite apart from any question of letting Owen know where she was, it would be a charity to give him some sign; it would be weak, it would be ugly, to be diverted from that kindness by the fact that Mrs. Gereth had attached a tinkling bell to it. A frank relation with him was only superficially discredited : she ought for his own sake to send him a word of cheer. So she repeatedly reasoned, but she as repeatedly delayed performance: if her general plan had been to be as still as a mouse, an interview like the interview at Ricks would be an odd contribution to that ideal. Therefore, with a confused preference of practice to theory, she let the days go by ; she felt that nothing was so imperative as the gain of precious time. She should n’t be able to stay with her father forever, but she might now reap the benefit of having married her sister. Maggie’s union had been built up round a small spare room. Concealed in this apartment she might try to paint again, and abetted by the grateful Maggie — for Maggie at least was grateful — she might try to dispose of her work. She had not indeed struggled with a brush since her visit to Waterbath, where the sight of the family splotches had put her immensely on her guard. Poynton, moreover, had been an impossible place for producing; no art could flourish there but a Buddhistic contemplation. It had stripped its mistress clean of all feeble accomplishments ; her hands were imbrued neither with ink nor with water-color. Close to Fleda’s present abode was the little shop of a man who mounted and framed pictures and desolately dealt in artists’ materials. She sometimes paused before it to look at a couple of shy experiments for which its dull window constituted publicity, small studies placed there for sale, and full of warning to a young lady without fortune and without talent. Some such young lady had brought them forth in sorrow; some such young lady, to see if they had been snapped up, had passed and repassed as helplessly as she herself was doing. They never had been, they never would be, snapped up; yet they were quite above the actual attainment of some other young ladies. It was a matter of discipline with Fleda to take an occasional lesson from them ; besides which, when she now quitted the house, she had to look for reasons after she was out. The only place to find them was in the shop windows. They made her feel like a servant girl taking her “ afternoon,” but that did n’t signify ; perhaps some day she would resemble such a person still more closely. This continued a fortnight, at the end of which the feeling was suddenly dissipated. She had stopped as usual in the presence of the little pictures ; then, as she turned away, she had found herself face to face with Owen Gereth.

At the sight of him two emotions passed quickly across her heart, one at the heels of the other. The first was an instant perception that this encounter was not an accident; the second, a consciousness as prompt that the best place for it was the street. She knew before he told her that he had been to see her, and the next thing she knew was that he had had information from his mother. Her mind grasped these things while he said, with a smile: “ I saw only your back, but I was sure. I was over the way. I’ve been at your bouse.”

“ How came you to know my house ? ” Fleda asked.

“ I like that! ” he laughed. “ How came you not to let me know that you were there ? ”

Fleda, at this, thought it best also to laugh. “ Since I didn’t let you know, why did you come ? ”

“ Oh. I say ! ” cried Owen. “ Don’t add insult to injury. Why in the world didn’t you let me know ? I came because I want awfully to see you.” He hesitated, then he added : “ I got the tip from mother : she has written to me, — fancy ! ”

They still stood where they had met. Fleda’s instinct was to keep him there ; the more so that she could already see him take for granted that they would immediately proceed together to her door. He rose before her with a different air : he looked less ruffled and bruised than he had done at Ricks, he showed a recovered freshness. Perhaps, however, this was only because she had scarcely seen him at all, as yet, in London form, as he would have called it, — “ turned out ” as he was turned out in town. In the country, heated with the chase and splashed with the mire, he had always rather reminded her of a picturesque peasant in national costume. This costume, as Owen wore it, varied from day to day; it was as copious as the wardrobe of an actor ; but it never failed of suggestions of the earth and the weather, the hedges and the ditches, the beasts and the birds. There had been days when it struck her as all nature in one pair of bhoots. It did n’t make him now another person that he was delicately dressed, shining and splendid, — that he had a higher hat, and light gloves with black seams, and a spearlike umbrella ; but it, made him, she soon decided, really handsomer, and that in turn gave him — for she never could think of him, or indeed of some other things, without the aid of his own vocabulary — a tremendous pull. Yes, this was, for the moment, as he looked at her, the great fact of their situation, — his pull was tremendous. She tried to keep the acknowledgment of it from trembling in her voice, as she said to him, with more surprise than she really felt, “ You ’ve then reopened relations with her ?”

“ It ’s she who has reopened them with me. I got her letter this morning. She told me you were here, and that she wished me to know it. She did n’t say much; she just gave me your address. I wrote her hack, ‘Thanks no end. Shall go to-day.’ So we are in correspondence again, are n’t we ? She means, of course, that you ve something to tell me from her, eh ? But if you have, why have n’t you let a fellow know ? He waited for no answer to this, he had so much to say. “ At your house, just now, they told me how long you ’ve been here. Have n’t you known all the while that I m counting the hours ? I left a word for you, — that I would be back at six ; but I’m awfully glad to have caught you so much sooner. You don’t mean to say you’re not going home! ” he exclaimed in dismay. “ The young woman there told me you went out early.”

“ I ’ve been out a very short time,” said Fleda, who had hung back with the general purpose of making things difficult for him. The street would make them difficult; she could trust the street. She reflected in time, however, that to betray to him she was afraid to admit him would give him more a feeling of facility than of anything else. She moved on with him after a moment, letting him direct their course to her door, which was only round a corner : she considered, as they went, that it might not prove such a stroke to have been in London so long, and yet not to have called him. She desired he should feel she was perfectly simple with him, and there was no simplicity in that. None the less, on the steps of the house, though she had a key, she rang the bell; and while they waited together and she averted her face, she looked straight into the depths of what Mrs. Gereth had meant by giving him the “ tip.” This had been perfidious, had been monstrous of Mrs. Gereth. and Fleda wondered if her letter had contained only what Owen had repeated.

Henry James.