"I can easily fancy what the Brigstocks say!" Fleda permitted herself to remark without solemnity. "She knows he would do anything to marry you."!

"It will seem very strange to me if you want me. But whatever you ask, whatever you need, that I will always do." "Painful?" Mrs. Gereth stared. "What pain can I ever feel again?"

CHAPTER VIII "I'm very, very tired." Mrs. Gereth's slow head-shake was tragic. "I couldn't do it again." In the place at the corner, on the chance of its saving time, Fleda wrote her telegram—wrote it in silence under Mrs. Gereth's eye and then in silence handed it to her. "I send this to Waterbath, on the possibility of your being there, to ask you to come to me." Mrs. Gereth held it a moment, read it more than once; then keeping it, and with her eyes on her companion, seemed to consider. There was the dawn of a kindness in her look; Fleda perceived in it, as if as the reward of complete submission, a slight relaxation of her rigor.