that their danger had dropped. She was sure, moreover,
that his tribute to Mona's taste was a repetition of the eloquent words
in which the girl had herself recorded it; she could indeed hear, with
all vividness, the pretty passage between the pair. "Don't you think
it's rather jolly, the old shop?" "Oh, it's all right!" Mona had
graciously remarked; and then they had probably, with a slap on a back,
run another race up or down a green bank. Fleda knew Mrs. Gereth had not
yet uttered a word to her son that would have shown him how much she
feared; but it was impossible to feel her friend's arm round her and not
become aware that this friend was now throbbing with a strange
intention. Owen's reply had scarcely been of a nature to usher in a
discussion of Mona's sensibilities; but Mrs. Gereth went on, in a
moment, with an innocence of which Fleda could measure the cold
hypocrisy: "Has she any sort of feeling for nice old things?" The
question was as fresh as the morning light.

"Oh, of course she likes everything that's nice." And Owen, who
constitutionally disliked questions--an answer was almost as hateful to
him as a "trick" to a big dog--smiled kindly at Fleda and conveyed that
she would understand what he meant even if his mother didn't. Fleda,
however, mainly understood that Mrs. Gereth, with an odd, wild laugh,
held her so hard that she hurt her.

"I could give up everything without a pang, I think, to a person I could
trust, I could respect." The girl heard her voice tremble under the
effort to show nothing but what she wanted to show, and felt the
sincerity of her implication that the piety most real to her was to be
on one's knees before one's high standard. "The best things here, as you
know, are the things your father and I collected, things all that we
worked for and waited for and suffered for. Yes," cried Mrs. Gereth,
with a fine freedom of fancy, "there are things in the house that we
almost starved for! They were our religion, they were our life, they
were _us_! And now they're only _me_--except that they're also _you_,
thank God, a little, you dear!" she continued, suddenly inflicting on
Fleda a kiss apparently intended to knock her into position. "There
isn't one of them I don't know and love--yes, as one remembers and
cherishes the happiest moments of one's life. Blindfold, in the dark,
with the brush of a finger, I could tell one from another. They're
living things to me; they know me, they return t