"Yes, that doesn't happen very often, does it?" Mrs. Brigstock looked round afresh at Fleda's home. "I couldn't stand the way she treated you, and that was what I had to say to her," Owen returned.!

Fleda gave a bold dramatic laugh. "Thank you, my love—with all the best things at Ricks!" Mrs. Gereth stared; the cloud gathered in her face again. "Why, in the name of goodness, when you adore him? I know what you see in him," she declared in another tone. "You're right!"

"Oh, I don't mean with all the things here," he explained in regard to the opinion he had just expressed. "I mean I could put up with it just as it was; it had a lot of good things, don't you think? I mean if everything was back at Poynton, if everything was all right." He brought out these last words with a sort of smothered sigh. Fleda didn't understand his explanation unless it had reference to another and more wonderful exchange—the restoration to the great house not only of its tables and chairs, but of its alienated mistress. This would imply the installation of his own life at Ricks, and obviously that of another person. Such another person could scarcely be Mona Brigstock. He put out his hand now; and once more she heard his unsounded words: "With everything patched up at the other place, I could live here with you. Don't you see what I mean?" "Well, was it I, pray, who perpetrated the wrong? Ain't I doing what I can to get the thing arranged?" Mrs. Gereth drank off her second cup. "And you're not afraid now?"