The girl hung fire a few seconds. "Derived from him." "What of that?" asked Fleda.!

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. "I knew what I was about," said Owen. "It didn't strike me that she had the least right to come down on us that way and ask for explanations."

"Not a whisper, not a step, in all the eight days. Perhaps they don't know. Perhaps they're crouching for a leap." "I suppose he means them—in the first place, at least—to try to talk you over." CHAPTER III