"That of course hasn't made her love me better." "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.!

"Didn't you ask?" Mrs. Gereth spoke as if she might have said, "What then were you doing all the while?" Again the good lady looked hard at her young hostess. "I came, I believe, Fleda, just, you know, to plead with you."

"I mean unless everything is different." "That's horrible!" said Fleda, looking at him in woe. "Of its opposite?"