Fleda went over them while they walked again; she had no need of the catalogue. At last she spoke once more: "Even the Maltese cross?" "Of course I count the ghosts. It seems to me ghosts count double—for what they were and for what they are. Somehow there were no ghosts at Poynton," Fleda went on. "That was the only fault."!

Owen was baffled but a few seconds; he had thought of everything. "Why, that's just where you come in." "Then he's as big a donkey as his mother! But you know you must account for their delay," Mrs. Gereth remarked.

"Not Mr. Gereth, I mean—nor his wife?" In the place at the corner, on the chance of its saving time, Fleda wrote her telegram—wrote it in silence under Mrs. Gereth's eye and then in silence handed it to her. "I send this to Waterbath, on the possibility of your being there, to ask you to come to me." Mrs. Gereth held it a moment, read it more than once; then keeping it, and with her eyes on her companion, seemed to consider. There was the dawn of a kindness in her look; Fleda perceived in it, as if as the reward of complete submission, a slight relaxation of her rigor. "She can't have gone back," Fleda declared. "Mona would have written on the spot."