"You really pretend," Fleda asked, "to think me capable of transmitting him that news?" "Didn't you ask?" Mrs. Gereth spoke as if she might have said, "What then were you doing all the while?"!

"Oh yes, she will have written bang off!" Owen cheerfully conceded. "It will seem very strange to me if you want me. But whatever you ask, whatever you need, that I will always do."

Her arrival took the form of a surprise very nearly as violent as that of the other time. The elements were different, but the effect, like the other, arrested her on the threshold: she stood there stupefied and delighted at the magic of a passion of which such a picture represented the low-water mark. Wound up but sincere, and passing quickly from room to room, Fleda broke out before she even sat down. "If you turn me out of the house for it, my dear, there isn't a woman in England for whom it wouldn't be a privilege to live here." Mrs. Gereth was as honestly bewildered as she had of old been falsely calm. She looked about at the few sticks that, as she afterwards phrased it, she had gathered in, and then hard at her guest, as if to protect herself against a joke sufficiently cruel. The girl's heart gave a leap, for this stare was the sign of an opportunity. Mrs. Gereth was all unwitting; she didn't in the least know what she had done, and as Fleda could tell her Fleda suddenly became the one who knew most. That counted for the moment as a magnificent position; it almost made all the difference. Yet what contradicted it was the vivid presence of the artist's idea. "Where on earth did you put your hand on such beautiful things?" Fleda thought an instant. "You mean makes her hesitate to keep you—not hesitate to renounce you?" "It's stronger than yours."