"You'll last quite as long—" Here Fleda suddenly hesitated. Dear Mrs. Gereth smiled sweetly. "How could he, when our situation is such that he communicates with me only through you, and that you are so tortuous you conceal everything?"!

Fleda was so far from a wish to triumph that she was absolutely ashamed of having anything to say for herself; but there was one thing, all the same, that not to say was impossible. "That he has done it, that he couldn't not do it, shows how right I was." It settled forever her attitude, and she spoke as if for her own mind; then after a little she added very gently, for Mrs. Gereth's: "That's to say, it shows that he was bound to her by an obligation that, however much he may have wanted to, he couldn't in any sort of honor break." Fleda remembered that she had seen them only once. "Did you see them?" she then ventured to ask.

"Then say it and have done with it!" "You know better than I," said Fleda, speaking with high extravagance. "If she does take it ill of you."