dn't
make him forget it, she tried to make him like it. She tried and she
succeeded: that's what she did. She's after all so much less of a fool
than he. And what _else_ had he originally liked?" Mrs. Gereth shrugged
her shoulders. "She did what you wouldn't!" Fleda's face had grown dark
with her wonder, but her friend's empty hands offered no balm to the
pain in it. "It was that if it was anything. Nothing else meets the
misery of it. Then there was quick work. Before he could turn round he
was married."

Fleda, as if she had been holding her breath, gave the sigh of a
listening child. "At that place you spoke of in town?"

"At the Registrar's, like a pair of low atheists."

The girl hesitated. "What do people say of that? I mean the 'world.'"

"Nothing, because nobody knows. They're to be married on the 17th, at
Waterbath church. If anything else comes out, everybody is a little
prepared. It will pass for some stroke of diplomacy, some move in the
game, some outwitting of _me_. It's known there has been a row with me."

Fleda was mystified. "People surely knew at Poynton," she objected, "if,
as you say, she's there."

"She was there, day before yesterday, only for a few hours. She met him
in London and went down to see the things."

Fleda remembered that she had seen them only once. "Did _you_ see them?"
she then ventured to ask.

"Everything."

"Are they right?"

"Quite right. There's nothing like them," said Mrs. Gereth. At this her
companion took up one of her hands again and kissed it as she had done
in London. "Mona went back that night; she was not there yesterday. Owen
stayed on," she added.

Fleda stared. "Then she's not to live there?"

"Rather! But not till after the public marriage." Mrs. Gereth seemed to
muse; then she brought out: "She'll live there alone."

"Alone?"

"She'll have it to herself."

"He won't live with her?"

"Never! But she's none the less his wife, and you're not," said Mrs.
Gereth, getting up. "Our only chance is the chance she may die."

Fleda appeared to consider: she appreciated her visitor's magnanimous
use of the plural. "Mona won't die," she replied.

"Well, _I_ shall, thank God! Till then"--and with this, for the first
time, Mrs. Gereth put out her hand--"don't desert me."

Fleda took her hand, and her clasp of it was a reiteration of a promise
already given. She said nothing, but her silence was an acceptance as
responsible as the vow of a nun. The next m