cried, with a long wail. Then she controlled herself. "I
see."

"She abused you, and I defended you. She denounced you--"

She checked him with a gesture. "Don't tell me what she did!" She had
colored up to her eyes, where, as with the effect of a blow in the face,
she quickly felt the tears gathering. It was a sudden drop in her great
flight, a shock to her attempt to watch over what Mona was entitled to.
While she had been straining her very soul in this attempt, the object
of her magnanimity had been pronouncing her "not honest." She took it
all in, however, and after an instant was able to speak with a smile.
She would not have been surprised to learn, indeed, that her smile was
strange. "You had said a while ago that your mother and I quarreled
about you. It's much more true that you and Mona have quarreled about
_me_."

Owen hesitated, but at last he brought it out. "What I mean to say is,
don't you know, that Mona, if you don't mind my saying so, has taken it
into her head to be jealous."

"I see," said Fleda. "Well, I dare say our conferences have looked very
odd."

"They've looked very beautiful, and they've been very beautiful. Oh,
I've told her the sort you are!" the young man pursued.

"That of course hasn't made her love me better."

"No, nor love me," said Owen. "Of course, you know, she says she loves
me."

"And do you say you love her?"

"I say nothing else--I say it all the while. I said it the other day a
dozen times." Fleda made no immediate rejoinder to this, and before she
could choose one he repeated his question of a moment before. "_Am_ I to
tell my solicitor to act?"

She had at that moment turned away from this solution, precisely because
she saw in it the great chance of her secret. If she should determine
him to adopt it she might put out her hand and take him. It would shut
in Mrs. Gereth's face the open door of surrender: she would flare up and
fight, flying the flag of a passionate, an heroic defense. The case
would obviously go against her, but the proceedings would last longer
than Mona's patience or Owen's propriety. With a formal rupture he would
be at large; and she had only to tighten her fingers round the string
that would raise the curtain on that scene. "You tell me you 'say' you
love her, but is there nothing more in it than your saying so? You
wouldn't say so, would you, if it's not true? What in the world has
become, in so short a time, of the affection that led t