Fleda's surprise at this aberration left her a moment looking at him. "Do you mean your marriage is off?" The way Owen hung fire at this question made it sound more playful than she had intended. She had, in fact, no consciousness of any intention but that of confining herself rigidly to her function. She could already see that, in whatever he had now braced himself for, she was an element he had not reckoned with. His preparation had been of a different sort—the sort congruous with his having been careful to go first and lunch solidly at the inn. He had not been forced to ask for her, but she became aware, in his presence, of a particular desire to make him feel that no harm could really come to him. She might upset him, as people called it, but she would take no advantage of having done so. She had never seen a person with whom she wished more to be light and easy, to be exceptionally human. The account he presently gave of the matter was that he indeed wouldn't have come if he had known she was on the spot; because then, didn't she see? he could have written to her. He would have had her there to let fly at his mother.!

Fleda was mystified. "People surely knew at Poynton," she objected, "if, as you say, she's there." "To succeed, it must be all me!"

"I explained to her fully your position and put before her much more strongly than she liked what seemed to me her absolute duty." "It didn't," Owen replied with candor. "She said our relation, yours and mine, isn't innocent." At this she knew. "Poynton's on fire?"