"Do you mean to say you'll have a regular kick-up with her?" "Oh no, we haven't quarreled a bit!" Then with a smile: "We've only diverged."!

"You should have told her, you know, that I had seen you in town only that one time," Fleda observed. Even yet, however, he hung back; and she remembered how, at the end of his hour at Ricks, she had been put to it to get him out of the house. He had in general a sort of cheerful slowness which helped him at such times, though she could now see his strong fist crumple his big, stiff gloves as if they had been paper. "But even if there's no letter—" he began. He began, but there he left it.

"In the first place, eh? And what does he mean in the second?" "'Even' the Maltese cross?" Mrs. Gereth rose as she sharply echoed the words. "My dear child, you don't suppose I'd have sacrificed that! For what in the world would you have taken me?" "Why is it you hate him so?" her hostess abruptly inquired.