do?" he asked with some
eagerness.

"What she ought to do?"

"_Don't_ you think it--I mean that she ought to give them up?"

"To give them up?" Fleda hesitated again.

"To send them back--to keep it quiet." The girl had not felt the impulse
to ask him to sit down among the monuments of his wrong, so that,
nervously, awkwardly, he fidgeted about the room with his hands in his
pockets and an effect of returning a little into possession through the
formulation of his view. "To have them packed and dispatched again,
since she knows so well how. She does it beautifully"--he looked close
at two or three precious pieces. "What's sauce for the goose is sauce
for the gander!"

He had laughed at his way of putting it, but Fleda remained grave. "Is
that what you came to say to her?"

"Not exactly those words. But I did come to say"--he stammered, then
brought it out--"I did come to say we must have them right back."

"And did you think your mother would see you?"

"I wasn't sure, but I thought it right to try--to put it to her kindly,
don't you see? If she won't see me, then she has herself to thank. The
only other way would have been to set the lawyers at her."

"I'm glad you didn't do that."

"I'm dashed if I want to!" Owen honestly declared. "But what's a fellow
to do if she won't meet a fellow?"

"What do you call meeting a fellow?" Fleda asked, with a smile.

"Why, letting _me_ tell her a dozen things she can have."

This was a transaction that Fleda, after a moment, had to give up trying
to represent to herself. "If she won't do that--?" she went on.

"I'll leave it all to my solicitor. _He_ won't let her off: by Jove, I
know the fellow!"

"That's horrible!" said Fleda, looking at him in woe.

"It's utterly beastly!"

His want of logic as well as his vehemence startled her; and with her
eyes still on his she considered before asking him the question these
things suggested. At last she asked it. "Is Mona very angry?"

"Oh dear, yes!" said Owen.

She had perceived that he wouldn't speak of Mona without her beginning.
After waiting fruitlessly now for him to say more, she continued: "She
has been there again? She has seen the state of the house?"

"Oh dear, yes!" Owen repeated.

Fleda disliked to appear not to take account of his brevity, but it was
just because she was struck by it that she felt the pressure of the
desire to know more. What it suggested was simply what her intelligence
supplied, for