"For you, of course—to entreat me to give you up. She thinks me awfully designing—that I've taken some sort of possession of you." Mrs. Gereth turned on her sharply. "Ready for what? Ready to see me ruined without a reason or a reward?"!

Owen's face, at this, showed a reviving dread, the fear of some darksome process of her mind. "If you speak for yourself I can understand, but why is it hideous for me?" Fleda felt the tone and finished her preparation; then she went and opened the door. "We'll look for him together," she said to her friend, who stood a moment taking in her face. "They may know something about him at the Colonel's."

"Oh, I heard her!" said Owen. "But plead with you for what?" "It didn't," Owen replied with candor. "She said our relation, yours and mine, isn't innocent." "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.