"I'm very glad to be at home," Fleda responded. Fleda, with a bright face, hesitated a moment. "As if I were one of those bad women in a play?"!

"Oh, I thought I remembered that at Poynton you had told me a day, and that it was near at hand." "Not even to have Poynton."

"But she'll only have been here a few minutes. What sort of a visit is that?" Fleda cried. "Then if anything has come of it here, it has come precisely of just four. That's literally, by the inventory, all there are!" said Mrs. Gereth. Her profuse preparations had all this time had no sequel, and, with a laugh that she felt to be awkward, she hastily complied with his request. "It's sure to be horrid," she said; "we don't have at all good things." She offered him also bread and butter, of which he partook, holding his cup and saucer in his other hand and moving slowly about the room. She poured herself a cup, but not to take it; after which, without wanting it, she began to eat a small stale biscuit. She was struck with the extinction of the unwillingness she had felt at Ricks to contribute to the bandying between them of poor Mona's name; and under this influence she presently resumed: "Am I to understand that she engaged herself to marry you without caring for you?"