"She can't have gone back," Fleda declared. "Mona would have written on the spot." "The honor and good name of a man you hate?"!

"If you'll go for him yourself, I'll wait here," said Fleda. "You know better than I," said Fleda, speaking with high extravagance.

CHAPTER XXI "What do you call the open, Mrs. Gereth?" Fleda demanded. Then as the other faltered: "Do you know where Mr. Owen is to-day?" "He recognized rot! You know what I think of him." Fleda knew; she had no wish to challenge a fresh statement. Mrs. Gereth made one—it was her sole, faint flicker of passion—to the extent of declaring that he was too abjectly weak to deserve the name of a man. For all Fleda cared!—it was his weakness she loved in him. "He took strange ways of pleasing you!" her friend went on. "There was no obligation till suddenly, the other day, the situation changed."