The instant after her challenge Fleda had faced him again in self-reproof. "There isn't a thing to be said against you, and I don't know what nonsense you make me talk! You have pleased me, and you've been right and good, and it's the only comfort, and you must go. Everything must come from Mona, and if it doesn't come we've said entirely too much. You must leave me alone—forever." Mrs. Brigstock, at this, became vivid at once; Fleda thought she looked most peculiar. She stood straight up, with a queer distention of her whole person and of everything in her face but her mouth, which she gathered into a small, tight orifice. Fleda was painfully divided; her joy was deep within, but it was more relevant to the situation that she should not appear to associate herself with the tone of familiarity in which Owen addressed a lady who had been, and was perhaps still, about to become his mother-in-law. She laid on Mrs. Brigstock's arm a repressive hand. Mrs. Brigstock, however, had already exclaimed on her having so wonderful a defender. "He speaks, upon my word, as if I had come here to be rude to you!"!

Fleda hesitated; at last, before her companion's, she lowered her look. "Because I love him. It's because he's weak that he needs me," she added. Mrs. Gereth drank off her second cup. "And you're not afraid now?"

Again the good lady looked hard at her young hostess. "I came, I believe, Fleda, just, you know, to plead with you." Fleda wondered. "And did you remember the little letter that, with your hands tied, you still succeeded in writing to him?" CHAPTER VII