"Dear, no; say that you'll go up to town and meet him." It _was_ bettered, the broad hint; and Fleda felt this to be still more the case when, returning to the subject before they went to bed, her companion said: "I make him over to you wholly, you know--to do what you please with. Deal with him in your own clever way--I ask no questions. All I ask is that you succeed." "That's charming," Fleda replied, "but it doesn't tell me a bit, you'll be so good as to consider, in what terms to write to him. It's not an answer from you to the message I was to give you." "The answer to his message is perfectly distinct: he shall have everything in the place the minute he'll say he'll marry you." "You really pretend," Fleda asked, "to think me capable of transmitting him that news?" "What else can I really pretend when you threaten so to cast me off if I speak the word myself?" "Oh, if _you_ speak the word!" the girl murmured very gravely, but happy at least to know that in this direction Mrs. Gereth confessed herself warned and helpless. Then she added: "How can I go on living with you on a footing of which I so deeply disapprove? Thinking as I do that you've despoiled him far more than is just or merciful--for if I expected you to take something, I didn't in the least expect you to take everything--how can I stay here without a sense that I'm backing you up in your cruelty and participating in your ill-gotten gains?" Fleda was determined that if she had the chill of her exposed and investigated state she would also have the convenience of it, and that if Mrs. Gereth popped in and out of the chamber of her soul she would at least return the freedom. "I shall quite hate, you know, in a day or two, every object that surrounds you--become blind to all the beauty and rarity that I formerly delighted in. Don't think me harsh; there's no use in my not being frank now. If I leave you, everything's at an end."