hate a person who should be so markedly averse to
having anything to do with her. Before this, however, in conversation
with her young friend, Mrs. Gereth furnished a more vivid motive for her
despair by asking how she could possibly be expected to sit there with
the new proprietors and accept--or call it, for a day, endure--the
horrors they would perpetrate in the house. Fleda reasoned that they
wouldn't after all smash things nor burn them up; and Mrs. Gereth
admitted when pushed that she didn't quite suppose they would. What she
meant was that they would neglect them, ignore them, leave them to
clumsy servants (there wasn't an object of them all but should be
handled with perfect love), and in many cases probably wish to replace
them by pieces answerable to some vulgar modern notion of the
convenient. Above all, she saw in advance, with dilated eyes, the
abominations they would inevitably mix up with them--the maddening
relics of Waterbath, the little brackets and pink vases, the sweepings
of bazaars, the family photographs and illuminated texts, the "household
art" and household piety of Mona's hideous home. Wasn't it enough simply
to contend that Mona would approach Poynton in the spirit of a
Brigstock, and that in the spirit of a Brigstock she would deal with her
acquisition? Did Fleda really see _her_, Mrs. Gereth demanded, spending
the remainder of her days with such a creature's elbow in her eye?

Fleda had to declare that she certainly didn't, and that Waterbath had
been a warning it would be frivolous to overlook. At the same time she
privately reflected that they were taking a great deal for granted, and
that, inasmuch as to her knowledge Owen Gereth had positively denied his
betrothal, the ground of their speculations was by no means firm. It
seemed to our young lady that in a difficult position Owen conducted
himself with some natural art; treating this domesticated confidant of
his mother's wrongs with a simple civility that almost troubled her
conscience, so deeply she felt that she might have had for him the air
of siding with that lady against him. She wondered if he would ever know
how little really she did this, and that she was there, since Mrs.
Gereth had insisted, not to betray, but essentially to confirm and
protect. The fact that his mother disliked Mona Brigstock might have
made him dislike the object of her preference, and it was detestable to
Fleda to remember that she might have appeared to h