"Well, at any rate, you don't call her names." "Then you'll be so good as to make them on the spot!" Mrs. Gereth was most emphatic. "You're going abroad with me."!

"Has let herself go?" "And how does she take it?"

"How came you to know my house?" Fleda asked. "She's not, she's not: there's nothing in it! Doesn't a fellow know?—except with you!" Owen ruefully added. With this he came out of the room, lowering his voice to secret supplication, pleading with her really to meet him on the ground of the negation of Mona. It was this betrayal of his need of support and sanction that made her retreat—harden herself in the effort to save what might remain of all she had given, given probably for nothing. The very vision of him as he thus morally clung to her was the vision of a weakness somewhere in the core of his bloom, a blessed manly weakness of which, if she had only the valid right, it would be all a sweetness to take care. She faintly sickened, however, with the sense that there was as yet no valid right poor Owen could give. "You can take it from my honor, you know," he whispered, "that she loathes me." "What I mean to say is, if she's angry at your backing me up—what will you do then? She can't possibly like it, you know."