"Not in any way." "The one I've already made so clear to you: my having it in black and white, as you may say, from her that she freely gives him up."!

Fleda wondered; with her free imagination she could wonder even while her cheek stung from a slap. "To the Registrar?" "Marry him if he were to ask me? Most distinctly not!"

Fleda opened her eyes. "She went down to Ricks?" "Oh yes, I told her exactly, and that you had been most awfully kind, and that I had placed the whole thing in your hands." "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."