surprise very nearly as violent as that
of the other time. The elements were different, but the effect, like the
other, arrested her on the threshold: she stood there stupefied and
delighted at the magic of a passion of which such a picture represented
the low-water mark. Wound up but sincere, and passing quickly from room
to room, Fleda broke out before she even sat down. "If you turn me out
of the house for it, my dear, there isn't a woman in England for whom it
wouldn't be a privilege to live here." Mrs. Gereth was as honestly
bewildered as she had of old been falsely calm. She looked about at the
few sticks that, as she afterwards phrased it, she had gathered in, and
then hard at her guest, as if to protect herself against a joke
sufficiently cruel. The girl's heart gave a leap, for this stare was the
sign of an opportunity. Mrs. Gereth was all unwitting; she didn't in the
least know what she had done, and as Fleda could tell her Fleda suddenly
became the one who knew most. That counted for the moment as a
magnificent position; it almost made all the difference. Yet what
contradicted it was the vivid presence of the artist's idea. "Where on
earth did you put your hand on such beautiful things?"

"Beautiful things?" Mrs. Gereth turned again to the little worn,
bleached stuffs and the sweet spindle-legs. "They're the wretched things
that were here--that stupid, starved old woman's."

"The maiden aunt's, the nicest, the dearest old woman that ever lived? I
thought you had got rid of the maiden aunt."

"She was stored in an empty barn--stuck away for a sale; a matter that,
fortunately, I've had neither time nor freedom of mind to arrange. I've
simply, in my extremity, fished her out again."

"You've simply, in your extremity, made a delight of her." Fleda took
the highest line and the upper hand, and as Mrs. Gereth, challenging her
cheerfulness, turned again a lustreless eye over the contents of the
place, she broke into a rapture that was unforced, but that she was
conscious of an advantage in being able to feel. She moved, as she had
done on the previous occasion, from one piece to another, with looks of
recognition and hands that lightly lingered, but she was as feverishly
jubilant now as she had formerly been anxious and mute. "Ah, the little
melancholy, tender, tell-tale things: how can they _not_ speak to you
and find a way to your heart? It's not the great chorus of Poynton; but
you're not, I'm sure, either s