"I knew what I was about," said Owen. "It didn't strike me that she had the least right to come down on us that way and ask for explanations." "What she said to me just before she went: she meant to plead with me."!

"I mean unless everything is different." Fleda stopped in front of her hostess. "I gave him my opinion that you're very logical, very obstinate, and very proud."

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—" What did he want her to understand? He seemed unable to bring it out, and this understanding was moreover exactly what she wished not to arrive at. Bewildered as she was, she had already taken in as much as she should know what to do with; the blood also was rushing into her face. He liked her—it was stupefying—more than he really ought: that was what was the matter with him and what he desired her to assimilate; so that she was suddenly as frightened as some thoughtless girl who finds herself the object of an overture from a married man. "I'm only prepared for the worst. The Brigstocks will simply send any telegram on."