"I'm completely at your service." Owen held out his hand to Fleda. "Good-bye, Miss Vetch. I hope to see you again to-morrow." He opened the door for Mrs. Brigstock, who passed before the girl with an oblique, averted salutation. Owen and Fleda, while he stood at the door, then faced each other darkly and without speaking. Their eyes met once more for a long moment, and she was conscious there was something in hers that the darkness didn't quench, that he had never seen before and that he was perhaps never to see again. He stayed long enough to take it—to take it with a sombre stare that just showed the dawn of wonder; then he followed Mrs. Brigstock out of the house. "An immense little fib?" Fleda felt weak; she was glad of the support of her seat.!

"The one I've already made so clear to you: my having it in black and white, as you may say, from her that she freely gives him up." "You didn't know I was here?"

Fleda was silent a little. "What do you know about his 'loving' me?" "Why, legal, don't you know?—what he calls setting the lawyers at you." "That's charming," Fleda replied, "but it doesn't tell me a bit, you'll be so good as to consider, in what terms to write to him. It's not an answer from you to the message I was to give you."