"I don't see very clearly. Of course you must give her what you offered her; of course you must keep your word. There must be no mistake about that!" the girl declared. "Is that what you came to ask me?" Fleda demanded.!

Fleda, at this, thought it best also to laugh. "Since I didn't let you know, why did you come?" "It didn't," Owen replied with candor. "She said our relation, yours and mine, isn't innocent."

"I can't tell you what they were, but they were powerful. She knew how," said Mrs. Gereth. "She can't have gone back," Fleda declared. "Mona would have written on the spot." Fleda was so far from a wish to triumph that she was absolutely ashamed of having anything to say for herself; but there was one thing, all the same, that not to say was impossible. "That he has done it, that he couldn't not do it, shows how right I was." It settled forever her attitude, and she spoke as if for her own mind; then after a little she added very gently, for Mrs. Gereth's: "That's to say, it shows that he was bound to her by an obligation that, however much he may have wanted to, he couldn't in any sort of honor break."