"I couldn't stand the way she treated you, and that was what I had to say to her," Owen returned. "But you've heard nothing?"!

Something in this touched the girl so that for a moment she could not trust herself to speak. "You're an honest man," she said at last. She had gone to the door and opened it. "Good-bye." "Well, I am, and I'm the person most concerned. Of course I didn't use just those words: I was perfectly civil, quite as civil as she. But I told her I didn't consider she had a right to put me any such question. I said I wasn't sure that even Mona had, with the extraordinary line, you know, that Mona has taken. At any rate the whole thing, the way I put it, was between Mona and me; and between Mona and me, if she didn't mind, it would just have to remain."

"Wouldn't it perhaps after all be better," she asked, "before doing this, to see if we can make his whereabouts certain?" Fleda was mystified. "People surely knew at Poynton," she objected, "if, as you say, she's there." "Very true, you've done it all yourself." Fleda spoke gravely and gently, without a breath of coquetry. "But those are shades between which she's probably not obliged to distinguish. It's enough for her that we're singularly intimate."