"For Mummy's answer?" Owen stared and looked perplexed; he was more and more fevered with so much vivid expression of his case. "Don't you think that if I'm here she may hate it worse--think I may want to make her reply bang off?" Fleda thought. "You don't, then?" "I want to take her in the right way, don't you know?--treat her as if I gave her more than just an hour or two." "I see," said Fleda. "Then, if you don't wait--good-bye." This again seemed not what he wanted. "Must _you_ do it bang off?" "I'm only thinking she'll be impatient--I mean, you know, to learn what will have passed between us." "I see," said Owen, looking at his gloves. "I can give her a day or two, you know. Of course I didn't come down to sleep," he went on. "The inn seems a horrid hole. I know all about the trains--having no idea you were here." Almost as soon as his interlocutress he was struck with the absence of the visible, in this, as between effect and cause. "I mean because in that case I should have felt I could stop over. I should have felt I could talk with you a blessed sight longer than with Mummy." "We've already talked a long time," smiled Fleda. "Awfully, haven't we?" He spoke with the stupidity she didn't object to. Inarticulate as he was, he had more to say; he lingered perhaps because he was vaguely aware of the want of sincerity in her encouragement to him to go. "There's one thing, please," he mentioned, as if there might be a great many others too. "Please don't say anything about Mona." She didn't understand. "About Mona?" "About its being _her_ that thinks she has gone too far." This was still slightly obscure, but now Fleda understood. "It mustn't seem to come from _her_ at all, don't you know? That would only make Mummy worse."