Fleda gave a dim smile. "You make me at least feel that I'm learning to know you very well when I hear you say such a thing as that. Mrs. Brigstock came to get round me, to supplicate me," she went on; "but to find you there, looking so much at home, paying me a friendly call and shoving the tea-things about—that was too much for her patience. She doesn't know, you see, that I'm after all a decent girl. She simply made up her mind on the spot that I'm a very bad case." "About bringing home to you?"—Fleda encouraged him.!

"Why, Mona's much worse than her mother. She wants much more to give me up." Mrs. Gereth, holding her mantle together, appeared for a while to consider.

"Surely it's the only proper thing for him to do." "We thought it very likely you would have come back. We knew of course of your having been at Ricks. If I didn't find you I thought I might perhaps find Mr. Vetch," Mrs. Brigstock went on. "Yes, Mona will. She'll open it under the pretext of having it repeated; and then she'll probably do nothing. She'll keep it as a proof of your immodesty."