do have a set-to with her?"

He paused so long for a reply that Fleda said: "I don't think I know
what you mean by a set-to."

"Well, if she calls _you_ names."

"I don't think she'll do that."

"What I mean to say is, if she's angry at your backing me up--what will
you do then? She can't possibly like it, you know."

"She may very well not like it; but everything depends. I must see what
I shall do. You mustn't worry about me."

She spoke with decision, but Owen seemed still unsatisfied. "You won't
go away, I hope?"

"Go away?"

"If she does take it ill of you."

Fleda moved to the door and opened it. "I'm not prepared to say. You
must have patience and see."

"Of course I must," said Owen--"of course, of course." But he took no
more advantage of the open door than to say: "You want me to be off, and
I'm off in a minute. Only, before I go, please answer me a question. If
you _should_ leave my mother, where would you go?"

Fleda smiled again. "I haven't the least idea."

"I suppose you'd go back to London."

"I haven't the least idea," Fleda repeated.

"You don't--a--live anywhere in particular, do you?" the young man went
on. He looked conscious as soon as he had spoken; she could see that he
felt himself to have alluded more grossly than he meant to the
circumstance of her having, if one were plain about it, no home of her
own. He had meant it as an allusion of a tender sort to all that she
would sacrifice in the case of a quarrel with his mother; but there was
indeed no graceful way of touching on that. One just couldn't be plain
about it.

Fleda, wound up as she was, shrank from any treatment at all of the
matter, and she made no answer to his question. "I _won't_ leave your
mother," she said. "I'll produce an effect on her; I'll convince her
absolutely."

"I believe you will, if you look at her like that!"

She was wound up to such a height that there might well be a light in
her pale, fine little face--a light that, while, for all return, at
first, she simply shone back at him, was intensely reflected in his own.
"I'll make her see it--I'll make her see it!" She rang out like a silver
bell. She had at that moment a perfect faith that she should succeed;
but it passed into something else when, the next instant, she became
aware that Owen, quickly getting between her and the door she had
opened, was sharply closing it, as might be said, in her face. He had
done this before she could stop him,