I'll write for the packers to-night!" Fleda, before this, had fallen forward on her companion's neck, and the two women, clinging together, had got up while the younger wailed on the other's bosom. "You smooth it down because you see more in it than there can ever be; but after my hideous double game how will you be able to believe in me again?" "I see in it simply what _must_ be, if you've a single spark of pity. Where on earth was the double game, when you've behaved like such a saint? You've been beautiful, you've been exquisite, and all our trouble is over." Fleda, drying her eyes, shook her head ever so sadly. "No, Mrs. Gereth, it isn't over. I can't do what you ask--I can't meet your condition." Mrs. Gereth stared; the cloud gathered in her face again. "Why, in the name of goodness, when you adore him? I know what you see in him," she declared in another tone. "You're right!" Fleda gave a faint, stubborn smile. "He cares for her too much." "Then why doesn't he marry her? He's giving you an extraordinary chance." "He doesn't dream I've ever thought of him," said Fleda. "Why should he, if you didn't?" "It wasn't with me you were in love, my duck." Then Mrs. Gereth added: "I'll go and tell him." "If you do any such thing, you shall never see me again,--absolutely, literally never!" Mrs. Gereth looked hard at her young friend, showing she saw she must believe her. "Then you're perverse, you're wicked. Will you swear he doesn't know?" "Of course he doesn't know!" cried Fleda indignantly. Her interlocutress was silent a little. "And that he has no feeling on _his_ side?" "For me?" Fleda stared. "Before he has even married her?" Mrs. Gereth gave a sharp laugh at this. "He ought at least to appreciate your wit. Oh, my dear, you _are_ a treasure! Doesn't he appreciate anything? Has he given you absolutely no symptom--not looked a look, not breathed a sigh?" "The case," said Fleda coldly, "is as I've had the honor to state it." "Then he's as big a donkey as his mother! But you know you must account for their delay," Mrs. Gereth remarked. "Why must I?" Fleda asked after a moment. "Because you were closeted with him here so long. You can't pretend at present, you know, not to have any art." The girl hesitated an instant; she was conscious that she must choose between two risks. She had had a secret and the secret was gone. Owen had one, which was still unbruised, and the greater risk now was that his mother should lay her formidable hand upon it. All Fleda's tenderness for him moved her to protect it; so she faced the smaller peril. "Their delay," she brought herself to reply, "may perhaps be Mona's doing. I mean because he has lost her the things." Mrs. Gereth jumped at this. "So that she'll break altogether if I keep them?" 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."