"She knows how awfully kind you've been to me," Owen said. He showed such discomfiture that he really gave away their situation; and Fleda found herself divided between the hope that he would take leave and the wish that he should see the whole of what the occasion might enable her to bring to pass for him. "She'll never, never break off!" said Fleda.!

"If he shouldn't be there," Fleda interrupted, "there will be no harm done." Mrs. Gereth said nothing for a minute. "You're prodigious in your choice of terms!" she then simply ejaculated.

"I know you can, or I shouldn't dream of speaking. When the pressure was removed she came up again. From the moment the house was once more what it had to be, her natural charm reasserted itself." "Well, was it I, pray, who perpetrated the wrong? Ain't I doing what I can to get the thing arranged?" "Well, you wouldn't at all events have ceased to like me, would you?" Owen demanded. It evidently mattered to him to know if she really justified Mona. "I mean of course if you had liked me—liked me as she liked me," he explained.