"The strain of what?" "How came you to know my house?" Fleda asked.!

Mrs. Gereth stared. "Do you mean he's at Waterbath? Well, that's your own affair. I can bear it if you can." "I can't tell you what they were, but they were powerful. She knew how," said Mrs. Gereth.

"I'm very glad to be at home," Fleda responded. "It's too wonderful, what you've done with the house!"—the visitor met her friend's eyes. They lighted up with joy—that friend herself so pleased with what she had done. This was not at all, in its accidental air of enthusiasm, what Fleda wanted to have said: it offered her as stupidly announcing from the first minute on whose side she was. Such was clearly the way Mrs. Gereth took it: she threw herself upon the delightful girl and tenderly embraced her again; so that Fleda soon went on, with a studied difference and a cooler inspection: "Why, you brought away absolutely everything!" He had laughed at his way of putting it, but Fleda remained grave. "Is that what you came to say to her?"