Fleda paid this statement the homage of a minute's muteness. "As to that, naturally, she has reason." She had paused an instant, and Mrs. Gereth took her up. "Well, if she had?"!

His want of logic as well as his vehemence startled her; and with her eyes still on his she considered before asking him the question these things suggested. At last she asked it. "Is Mona very angry?" "It didn't," Owen replied with candor. "She said our relation, yours and mine, isn't innocent."

"Oh no, not everything; I saw how little I could get into this scrap of a house. I only brought away what I required." Fleda looked very grave, weighing the whole matter. "I dare say that when she started, when she arrived, she didn't mean to 'come down.'" In the place at the corner, on the chance of its saving time, Fleda wrote her telegram—wrote it in silence under Mrs. Gereth's eye and then in silence handed it to her. "I send this to Waterbath, on the possibility of your being there, to ask you to come to me." Mrs. Gereth held it a moment, read it more than once; then keeping it, and with her eyes on her companion, seemed to consider. There was the dawn of a kindness in her look; Fleda perceived in it, as if as the reward of complete submission, a slight relaxation of her rigor.