Fleda remembered that she had seen them only once. "Did you see them?" she then ventured to ask. "She will, as soon as her mother gets home and tells her."!

"Well, those things are between yourselves, and you seem to me both poor creatures at best." Mrs. Gereth spoke with a rich humor which tipped with light for an instant a real conviction. "I don't know what you've got in your veins: you absurdly exaggerated the difficulties. But enough is as good as a feast, and when once I get you abroad together—!" She checked herself as if from excess of meaning; what might happen when she should get them abroad together was to be gathered only from the way she slowly rubbed her hands. Fleda, drying her eyes, shook her head ever so sadly. "No, Mrs. Gereth, it isn't over. I can't do what you ask—I can't meet your condition."

"Isn't it there, when he's in town, that he has a room? He has at present no other London address," Fleda said: "it's there one writes to him." Again the good lady looked hard at her young hostess. "I came, I believe, Fleda, just, you know, to plead with you." "You should have told her, you know, that I had seen you in town only that one time," Fleda observed.