Fleda was mystified. "People surely knew at Poynton," she objected, "if, as you say, she's there." "I can easily fancy what the Brigstocks say!" Fleda permitted herself to remark without solemnity.!

"Why, she simply won't marry me, don't you see?" Fleda had remained there, gathering in her purpose. "How little you know him!"

"A bibelot the more or the less," Fleda said, "could have made little difference in this grand general view of you. I take you simply for the greatest of all conjurers. You've operated with a quickness—and with a quietness!" Her voice trembled a little as she spoke, for the plain meaning of her words was that what her friend had achieved belonged to the class of operation essentially involving the protection of darkness. Fleda felt she really could say nothing at all if she couldn't say that she knew what the danger had been. She completed her thought by a resolute and perfectly candid question: "How in the world did you get off with them?" Her gesture of resignation gave him a pretext for catching at her hand, but before he could take it she had put it behind her. They had been seated together on Maggie's single sofa, and her movement brought her to her feet, while Owen, looking at her reproachfully, leaned back in discouragement. "What good does it do me to be here when I find you only a stone?" "What else can I really pretend when you threaten so to cast me off if I speak the word myself?"