"Why should I loathe it?" Fleda asked with a strained smile. Then, before Mrs. Gereth could reply, she pursued: "I'm thinking of his general undertaking—to give her the house as she originally saw it." "I know I did. I was afraid to show it."!

"Why, that I'm in love with you!" Fleda appeared to consider: she appreciated her visitor's magnanimous use of the plural. "Mona won't die," she replied.

"I do, then." Mrs. Gereth looked hard at the floor. "There was no obligation at the time you saw him last—when you sent him, hating her as he did, back to her." There was an oddity in his helplessness; he appeared to wish to persuade her and to satisfy himself that she sincerely felt how worthy he really was to treat what had happened as an injury. She could only exclaim, almost as helplessly as himself: "Of course you did justice! It's all most painful. I shall instantly let your mother know," she again declared, "the way I've spoken of her to you." She clung to that idea as to the sign of her straightness. "Oh no, we haven't quarreled a bit!" Then with a smile: "We've only diverged."