quite the end of
the business. This imagination of Fleda's was a faculty that easily
embraced all the heights and depths and extremities of things; that made
a single mouthful, in particular, of any tragic or desperate necessity.
She was perhaps at first just a trifle disappointed not to find in the
note in question a syllable that strayed from the text; but the next
moment she had risen to a point of view from which it presented itself
as a production almost inspired in its simplicity. It was simple even
for Owen, and she wondered what had given him the cue to be more so than
usual. Then she saw how natures that are right just do the things that
are right. He wasn't clever--his manner of writing showed it; but the
cleverest man in England couldn't have had more the instinct that, under
the circumstances, was the supremely happy one, the instinct of giving
her something that would do beautifully to be shown to Mrs. Gereth. This
was a kind of divination, for naturally he couldn't know the line Mrs.
Gereth was taking. It was furthermore explained--and that was the most
touching part of all--by his wish that she herself should notice how
awfully well he was behaving. His very bareness called her attention to
his virtue; and these were the exact fruits of her beautiful and
terrible admonition. He was cleaving to Mona; he was doing his duty; he
was making tremendously sure he should be without reproach.

If Fleda handed this communication to her friend as a triumphant gage of
the innocence of the young man's heart, her elation lived but a moment
after Mrs. Gereth had pounced upon the tell-tale spot in it. "Why in the
world, then," that lady cried, "does he still not breathe a breath about
the day, the _day_, the day?" She repeated the word with a crescendo of
superior acuteness; she proclaimed that nothing could be more marked
than its absence--an absence that simply spoke volumes. What did it
prove in fine but that she was producing the effect she had toiled
for--that she had settled or was rapidly settling Mona?

Such a challenge Fleda was obliged in some manner to take up. "You may
be settling Mona," she returned with a smile, "but I can hardly regard
it as sufficient evidence that you're settling Mona's lover."

"Why not, with such a studied omission on his part to gloss over in any
manner the painful tension existing between them--the painful tension
that, under providence, I've been the means of bringing about? He giv