"Why not to Waterbath at once?" Fleda asked. "What alarm should there have been? Owen left me almost defiantly alone: I had taken a time that I had reason to believe was safe from a descent." Fleda had another wonder, which she hesitated to express: it would scarcely do to ask Mrs. Gereth if she hadn't stood in fear of her servants. She knew, moreover, some of the secrets of her humorous household rule, all made up of shocks to shyness and provocations to curiosity—a diplomacy so artful that several of the maids quite yearned to accompany her to Ricks. Mrs. Gereth, reading sharply the whole of her visitor's thought, caught it up with fine frankness. "You mean that I was watched—that he had his myrmidons, pledged to wire him if they should see what I was 'up to'? Precisely. I know the three persons you have in mind: I had them in mind myself. Well, I took a line with them—I settled them."!

Fleda, as if she had been holding her breath, gave the sigh of a listening child. "At that place you spoke of in town?" "Then what do you make of his aversion to her?"

Fleda hesitated; he held her fast. "No. Anything is better than that." The handle of the door turned, and Fleda had only time to jerk at him: "Your mother!" "I doubt if they'd bear it again!"