Fleda hesitated; she felt herself reddening. "I've only said your son wants it. I haven't said I do." "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.!

So the young man, following her attentively, appeared equally to feel. "So far as that goes," he promptly declared, "she has at last tired Mona out." He uttered the words with a strange approach to hilarity. At this our young lady smiled. "Yes, because it was a disappointment. She had been so sure."

"I think he would if he were free," said Mrs. Gereth. "I shall need your company," said Mrs. Gereth. Fleda wondered an instant if this were not practically a demand for penal submission—for a surrender that, in its complete humility, would be a long expiation. But there was none of the latent chill of the vindictive in the way Mrs. Gereth pursued: "We can always, as time goes on, talk of them together." "Perhaps you've a right to say that you left it a little to mine." Mixed up with the spoils there, rising before him as if she were in a manner their keeper, she felt that she must absolutely dissociate herself. Mrs. Gereth had made it impossible to do anything but give her away. "I can only tell you that, on my side, I left it to her. I never dreamed either that she would pick out so many things."