"No, I won't receive him here with you. Only where I received him last—only there again." She showed her companion that as to that she was firm. "What do you want of him," Fleda sadly asked, "feeling as you do to both of us?"!

It sounded so like a menace that, with a full divination at last, the poor girl fell weakly into a chair. "What on earth have you done?" Fleda stopped in front of her hostess. "I gave him my opinion that you're very logical, very obstinate, and very proud."

"You should have told her, you know, that I had seen you in town only that one time," Fleda observed. "Nothing, because nobody knows. They're to be married on the 17th, at Waterbath church. If anything else comes out, everybody is a little prepared. It will pass for some stroke of diplomacy, some move in the game, some outwitting of me. It's known there has been a row with me." Fleda, at this, felt that her heroism had come to its real test—felt that in telling him the truth she should effectively raise a hand to push his impediment out of the way. Was the knowledge that such a motion would probably dispose forever of Mona capable of yielding to the conception of still giving her every chance she was entitled to? That conception was heroic, but at the same moment it reminded Fleda of the place it had held in her plan, she was also reminded of the not less urgent claim of the truth. Ah, the truth—there was a limit to the impunity with which one could juggle with it! Wasn't what she had most to remember the fact that Owen had a right to his property and that he had also her vow to stand by him in the effort to recover it? How did she stand by him if she hid from him the single way to recover it of which she was quite sure? For an instant that seemed to her the fullest of her life she debated. "Yes," she said at last, "if your marriage is really abandoned, she will give up everything she has taken."