Fleda was silent a moment. "No, I don't mean that Owen has any," she returned at last. "Oh, I mean for myself!" Fleda said impatiently.!

"That would have been the sane, sound, immediate course to adopt. With a grain of gumption you'd both instantly have felt it. I should have found a way to take you, you know, if I'd been what Owen's supposed to be. I should have got the business over first; the rest could come when you liked! Good God, girl, your place was to stand before me as a woman honestly married. One doesn't know what one has hold of in touching you, and you must excuse my saying that you're literally unpleasant to me to meet as you are. Then at least we could have talked, and Owen, if he had the ghost of a sense of humor, could have snapped his fingers at your refinements." "That was why his father, whom he exactly resembles, needed me. And I didn't fail his father," said Mrs. Gereth. She gave Fleda a moment to appreciate the remark; after which she pursued: "Mona Brigstock isn't weak; she's stronger than you!"

Fleda, with a bright face, hesitated a moment. "As if I were one of those bad women in a play?" Mrs. Gereth, considering, appeared to fall in with the girl's fine humor. "Poynton was too splendidly happy." "Oh yes, I told her exactly, and that you had been most awfully kind, and that I had placed the whole thing in your hands."