"I see," said Fleda. "Well, I dare say our conferences have looked very odd." Fleda wondered. "And did you remember the little letter that, with your hands tied, you still succeeded in writing to him?"!

"You've diverged uncommonly far!"—Owen laughed back. Fleda, with her hideous crockery and her father's collections, could conceive that these objects, to her visitor's perception even more strongly than to her own, measured the length of the swing from Poynton and Ricks; she was aware too that her high standards figured vividly enough even to Owen's simplicity to make him reflect that West Kensington was a tremendous fall. If she had fallen it was because she had acted for him. She was all the more content he should thus see she had acted, as the cost of it, in his eyes, was none of her own showing. "What seems to have happened," he exclaimed, "is that you've had a row with her and yet not moved her!" "Is that what he calls it?" She seemed to speak with disinterested curiosity.

"Oh no, not everything; I saw how little I could get into this scrap of a house. I only brought away what I required." "It was fortunate for you," said Fleda, "that she's apparently not aware of the manner in which, almost under her nose, you advertised me to him at Poynton." "By letting yourself go."