"The maiden aunt's, the nicest, the dearest old woman that ever lived? I thought you had got rid of the maiden aunt." "You'll tell her what you think she ought to do?" he asked with some eagerness.!

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. "I'm unhappy because I torment you, and you don't understand me."

Fleda wondered. "And did you remember the little letter that, with your hands tied, you still succeeded in writing to him?" Owen answered with a kind of gay despair. "God knows, Miss Vetch, where or when or what my marriage is! If it isn't 'off,' it certainly, at the point things have reached, isn't on. I haven't seen Mona for ten days, and for a week I haven't heard from her. She used to write me every week, don't you know? She won't budge from Waterbath, and I haven't budged from town." Then he suddenly broke out: "If she does chuck me, will mother come round?" "No, 'she' won't see them." Then Fleda said, "What I mean is, for this dear one of ours, that if she had (as I know she did; it's in the very taste of the air!) a great accepted pain—"