"Why not to Waterbath at once?" Fleda asked. "That's your great feeling about him," Fleda said; "but how, after what has happened, can it be his about you?"!

"Why must I?" Fleda asked after a moment. "She can't have gone back," Fleda declared. "Mona would have written on the spot."

"Only give her time," said Fleda. She had advanced to the threshold of the door thus thrown open to her and, without exactly crossing it, she threw in an appreciative glance. She asked Owen when his marriage would take place, and in the light of his reply read that Mrs. Gereth's wretched attitude would have no influence at all on the event, absolutely fixed when he came down, and distant by only three months. He liked Fleda's seeming to be on his side, though that was a secondary matter, for what really most concerned him now was the line his mother took about Poynton, her declared unwillingness to give it up. Mrs. Gereth looked at her rather hard. "If he doesn't care?" "Well, you wouldn't at all events have ceased to like me, would you?" Owen demanded. It evidently mattered to him to know if she really justified Mona. "I mean of course if you had liked me—liked me as she liked me," he explained.