Fleda stayed her hand. "No, no—I'm superstitious." "Well," said Mrs. Gereth profoundly, "it will be clear enough that Mona has."!

"I see. And you were never sure." Fleda laid on her arm a hand of vague comfort, of which Mrs. Gereth took no notice. "You've been capable, just to tell me, of this wretched journey, of this consideration that I don't deserve?"

"Then he's as big a donkey as his mother! But you know you must account for their delay," Mrs. Gereth remarked. "No, but he has told you. That's better still!" laughed Mrs. Gereth. "My dear child," she went on with an air that affected the girl as a sort of blind profanity, "don't try to make yourself out better than you are. I know what you are. I haven't lived with you so much for nothing. You're not quite a saint in heaven yet. Lord, what a creature you'd have thought me in my good time! But you do like it, fortunately, you idiot. You're pale with your passion, you sweet thing. That's exactly what I wanted to see. I can't for the life of me think where the shame comes in." Then with a finer significance, a look that seemed to Fleda strange, she added: "It's all right." "It didn't," Owen replied with candor. "She said our relation, yours and mine, isn't innocent."