"You'll all the same come abroad with me?" Mrs. Gereth met that allusion with a prompt firmness that made almost insolently light of any ground of complaint, and Fleda's own sense of responsibility was now so vivid that all resentments turned comparatively pale. She had no heart to produce a grievance; she could only, left as she was with the little mystery on her hands, produce, after a moment, a question. "How then do you come to know that your son has ever thought—"!

Fleda hesitated. "Did you see her?" Fleda stared. "Then she's not to live there?"

"Painful?" Mrs. Gereth stared. "What pain can I ever feel again?" "Why, for you, of course, dearest friend!" Fleda interjected, falling instinctively into the address that embodied the intensest pressure. She wanted to put Mrs. Gereth between her and her danger. "Don't you think it—I mean that she ought to give them up?"