Owen evidently thought her painfully perverse. "It was you who carried it off; you behaved like a brick. And so did I, I consider. If you only knew the difficulty I had! I told her you were the noblest and straightest of women." "It has lasted long enough for my purpose. There was something I wanted to know, but I think I know it now."!

Fleda, as if she had been holding her breath, gave the sigh of a listening child. "At that place you spoke of in town?" Fleda stared. "Then she's not to live there?"

"Nothing, because nobody knows. They're to be married on the 17th, at Waterbath church. If anything else comes out, everybody is a little prepared. It will pass for some stroke of diplomacy, some move in the game, some outwitting of me. It's known there has been a row with me." "Why should I loathe it?" Fleda asked with a strained smile. Then, before Mrs. Gereth could reply, she pursued: "I'm thinking of his general undertaking—to give her the house as she originally saw it." Fleda decided. "Drive to Euston, please."