"I'm thinking," Fleda continued, "of the simple question of his keeping faith on an important clause of his contract: it doesn't matter whether it's with a stupid girl or with a monster of cleverness. I'm thinking of his honor and his good name." "If he went," Fleda asked, "doesn't that exactly prove that he recognized one?"!

Mrs. Gereth was silent a moment; then "Nonsense!" she sharply replied. "That it was none of her business."

The mixture of reluctance and dependence in this made her feel how much she was failing him. She had the sense of "chucking" him too. "No, no, not yet!" she said, though she had really no other and no better course to prescribe. "Doesn't it occur to you," she asked in a moment, "that if Mona is, as you say, drawing away, she may have, in doing so, a very high motive? She knows the immense value of all the objects detained by your mother, and to restore the spoils of Poynton she is ready—is that it!—to make a sacrifice. The sacrifice is that of an engagement she had entered upon with joy." "Oh no, not everything; I saw how little I could get into this scrap of a house. I only brought away what I required." "Painful?" Mrs. Gereth stared. "What pain can I ever feel again?"