Fleda remembered that she had seen them only once. "Did you see them?" she then ventured to ask. "I couldn't stand the way she treated you, and that was what I had to say to her," Owen returned.!

"He hasn't told her so," Fleda said. "Then what do you make of his aversion to her?"

"He doesn't dream I've ever thought of him," said Fleda. "Why should he, if you didn't?" "You plunge me in stupefaction," that lady answered, "and at the same time you terrify me. Your account of Owen is inconceivable, and yet I don't know what to hold on by. He cares for you, it does appear, and yet in the same breath you inform me that nothing is more possible than that he's spending these days at Waterbath. Excuse me if I'm so dull as not to see my way in such darkness. If he's at Waterbath he doesn't care for you. If he cares for you he's not at Waterbath." It was doubtless in contradictious allusion to this (which at the time had made her simply drop her head as in a strange, vain reverie) that Mrs. Gereth, a day or two later, said to Fleda: "Don't think I shall be a bit affected if I'm here to see it when he comes again to make up to you."