This was a transaction that Fleda, after a moment, had to give up trying to represent to herself. "If she won't do that—?" she went on. "That's horrible!" said Fleda, looking at him in woe.!

"Then if you're thinking of Owen, how can you bear to think?" "What bearing have her feelings, pray?" Fleda asked.

"Wouldn't it perhaps after all be better," she asked, "before doing this, to see if we can make his whereabouts certain?" "That's your great feeling about him," Fleda said; "but how, after what has happened, can it be his about you?" 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."