"Please open the house-door," said Fleda. "Back to the inn?"!

"The old things?" Fleda considered again. "It will do no good of any sort to anything or any one. That's another question I would rather we shouldn't discuss, please," she gently added. "Then what do you make of his aversion to her?"

Mrs. Gereth looked at her rather hard. "If he doesn't care?" "I said to her that her question revealed a total misconception of the nature of my present relations with my son. I said to her that I had no relations with him at all, and that nothing had passed between us for months. I said to her that my hands were spotlessly clean of any attempt to make him make up to you. I said to her that I had taken from Poynton what I had a right to take, but had done nothing else in the world. I was determined that if I had bit my tongue off to oblige you I would at least have the righteousness that my sacrifice gave me." Fleda remembered that she had seen them only once. "Did you see them?" she then ventured to ask.