"If we have lost?" Fleda repeated as she paused again. "I explained to her fully your position and put before her much more strongly than she liked what seemed to me her absolute duty."!

"Perhaps you've a right to say that you left it a little to mine." Mixed up with the spoils there, rising before him as if she were in a manner their keeper, she felt that she must absolutely dissociate herself. Mrs. Gereth had made it impossible to do anything but give her away. "I can only tell you that, on my side, I left it to her. I never dreamed either that she would pick out so many things." Owen waited long enough to take in the question; then with a serenity startling even to her knowledge of his nature, "I don't think I can have really loved her, you know," he replied.

"That would have been the sane, sound, immediate course to adopt. With a grain of gumption you'd both instantly have felt it. I should have found a way to take you, you know, if I'd been what Owen's supposed to be. I should have got the business over first; the rest could come when you liked! Good God, girl, your place was to stand before me as a woman honestly married. One doesn't know what one has hold of in touching you, and you must excuse my saying that you're literally unpleasant to me to meet as you are. Then at least we could have talked, and Owen, if he had the ghost of a sense of humor, could have snapped his fingers at your refinements." "She'll have it to herself." Fleda winced. "I've told you what I believe about that. She'll make scenes and conditions; she'll worry him. But she'll hold him fast; she'll never give him up."