"I must take it on trust," the girl pursued. "And what if Mona doesn't give you up?" she added. "They'll read it first," said Mrs. Gereth.!

"No. I knew only that you had had, in London, all that you told me, that day, to do; and it was Mona's idea that after your sister's marriage you were staying on with your father. So I thought you were with him still." "Well, was it I, pray, who perpetrated the wrong? Ain't I doing what I can to get the thing arranged?"

Her companion hesitated. "In your name?" 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." "Not Mr. Gereth, I mean—nor his wife?"