At the sight of him two fresh waves passed quickly across her heart, one at the heels of the other. The first was an instant perception that this encounter was not an accident; the second a consciousness as prompt that the best place for it was the street. She knew before he told her that he had been to see her, and the next thing she knew was that he had had information from his mother. Her mind grasped these things while he said with a smile: "I saw only your back, but I was sure. I was over the way. I've been at your house." Fleda winced. "I've told you what I believe about that. She'll make scenes and conditions; she'll worry him. But she'll hold him fast; she'll never give him up."!

Fleda appeared to consider: she appreciated her visitor's magnanimous use of the plural. "Mona won't die," she replied. So the young man, following her attentively, appeared equally to feel. "So far as that goes," he promptly declared, "she has at last tired Mona out." He uttered the words with a strange approach to hilarity.

"Never. Besides, I'm happy," said Fleda. "Then you'll be so good as to make them on the spot!" Mrs. Gereth was most emphatic. "You're going abroad with me." "No, 'she' won't see them." Then Fleda said, "What I mean is, for this dear one of ours, that if she had (as I know she did; it's in the very taste of the air!) a great accepted pain—"