"You mean that she'll be the soul of the row?" "Oh, I mean for myself!" Fleda said impatiently.!

Again the good lady looked hard at her young hostess. "I came, I believe, Fleda, just, you know, to plead with you." "It will seem very strange to me if you want me. But whatever you ask, whatever you need, that I will always do."

Fleda, meanwhile, had had time to make her reflections, which were moreover the continued throb of those that had occupied the interval between Owen's departure and his mother's return. If she should now repeat his words, this wouldn't at all play the game of her definite vow; it would only play the game of her little gagged and blinded desire. She could calculate well enough the effect of telling Mrs. Gereth how she had had it from Owen's troubled lips that Mona was only waiting for the restitution and would do nothing without it. The thing was to obtain the restitution without imparting that knowledge. The only way, also, not to impart it was not to tell any truth at all about it; and the only way to meet this last condition was to reply to her companion, as she presently did: "He told me nothing whatever: he didn't touch on the subject." Owen waited a little. "And having done that, you departed?" Something in this touched the girl so that for a moment she could not trust herself to speak. "You're an honest man," she said at last. She had gone to the door and opened it. "Good-bye."