Fleda moved to the door and opened it. "I'm not prepared to say. You must have patience and see." "Why, she simply won't marry me, don't you see?"!

She came out on the platform: everywhere she met the smoke. She covered her face with her hands. "I'll go back." "Well, then, let him take the only way to get it satisfied."

"She's simple and slow, but she's not a fool: I think she treated me, on the whole, very well." Fleda remembered how Mrs. Gereth had treated Mona when the Brigstocks came down to Poynton. "Oh, I don't mean with all the things here," he explained in regard to the opinion he had just expressed. "I mean I could put up with it just as it was; it had a lot of good things, don't you think? I mean if everything was back at Poynton, if everything was all right." He brought out these last words with a sort of smothered sigh. Fleda didn't understand his explanation unless it had reference to another and more wonderful exchange—the restoration to the great house not only of its tables and chairs, but of its alienated mistress. This would imply the installation of his own life at Ricks, and obviously that of another person. Such another person could scarcely be Mona Brigstock. He put out his hand now; and once more she heard his unsounded words: "With everything patched up at the other place, I could live here with you. Don't you see what I mean?" "But she'll only have been here a few minutes. What sort of a visit is that?" Fleda cried.