CHAPTER XXII "Certainly I shall not mention Mona," Fleda said, "and there won't be the slightest necessity for it. The wrong's quite sufficiently yours, and the demand you make is perfectly justified by it."!

Mrs. Gereth shrugged her shoulders. "Why, of the whole wretched thing."

She felt sick; she sank upon a seat, staring up at him. "Do you mean that great house is lost?" "It's too wonderful, what you've done with the house!"—the visitor met her friend's eyes. They lighted up with joy—that friend herself so pleased with what she had done. This was not at all, in its accidental air of enthusiasm, what Fleda wanted to have said: it offered her as stupidly announcing from the first minute on whose side she was. Such was clearly the way Mrs. Gereth took it: she threw herself upon the delightful girl and tenderly embraced her again; so that Fleda soon went on, with a studied difference and a cooler inspection: "Why, you brought away absolutely everything!" Owen's bewilderment visibly increased. "You think, then, as she does, that I must send down the police?"