"To help, and to help so as to please me. That was the way to take them; it was what they had least expected. I marched up to them and looked each straight in the eye, giving him the chance to choose if he'd gratify me or gratify my son. He gratified me. They were too stupid!" "I can easily fancy what the Brigstocks say!" Fleda permitted herself to remark without solemnity.!

Owen gave her a gloomy glance; then he blew a speck off the crown of his hat. "But if you do have a set-to with her?" Fleda felt herself flush slightly, but she tried to smile. "Did you tell her all about it? Did you make her understand you want me?"

At the end of it, one day, the London paper had another piece of news: "Mr. and Mrs. Owen Gereth, who arrived in town last week, proceed this morning to Paris." They exchanged no word about it till the evening, and none indeed would then have been uttered had not Mrs. Gereth irrelevantly broken out: "I dare say you wonder why I declared the other day with such assurance that he wouldn't live with her. He apparently is living with her." "That gives me a pull!" Fleda returned, smiling. "But if he knew that so well, what chance was there in it for her?"