Fleda hesitated; he held her fast. "No. Anything is better than that." "I'll leave it all to my solicitor. He won't let her off: by Jove, I know the fellow!"!

Fleda debated. "Are you so very sure she will?" "To you, of course—to enjoy, to keep for yourself."

The mixture of reluctance and dependence in this made her feel how much she was failing him. She had the sense of "chucking" him too. "No, no, not yet!" she said, though she had really no other and no better course to prescribe. "Doesn't it occur to you," she asked in a moment, "that if Mona is, as you say, drawing away, she may have, in doing so, a very high motive? She knows the immense value of all the objects detained by your mother, and to restore the spoils of Poynton she is ready—is that it!—to make a sacrifice. The sacrifice is that of an engagement she had entered upon with joy." Fleda thought. "You don't, then?" "You didn't know I was here?"