"She was sure of you!" Mrs. Gereth returned. But this didn't diminish the satisfaction taken by Fleda in showing how serenely and lucidly she could talk. "Do you mean in the way of justifying you?"!

Fleda hesitated. "Why do you need saving, when you announced to me just now that you're a free man?" "Then what do you make of his aversion to 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 didn't say much; she just gave me your address. I wrote her back, you know, 'Thanks no end. Shall go to-day.' So we are in correspondence again, aren't we? She means of course that you've something to tell me from her, eh? But if you have, why haven'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. Haven'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." "For you, of course—to entreat me to give you up. She thinks me awfully designing—that I've taken some sort of possession of you." "Even the Maltese cross. Why not that as well as everything else?—especially as I remembered how you like it."