er being offered to Owen, that way, before her very
face, as his mother's candidate for the honor of his hand. That was all
he could have seen in such an outbreak and in the indecency of her
standing there to enjoy it. Fleda had on the prior occasion dashed out
of the room by the shortest course and in her confusion had fallen upon
Mona in the garden. She had taken an aimless turn with her, and they had
had some talk, rendered at first difficult and almost disagreeable by
Mona's apparent suspicion that she had been sent out to spy, as Mrs.
Gereth had tried to spy, into her opinions. Fleda was sagacious enough
to treat these opinions as a mystery almost awful; which had an effect
so much more than reassuring that at the end of five minutes the young
lady from Waterbath suddenly and perversely said: "Why has she never had
a winter garden thrown out? If ever I have a place of my own I mean to
have one." Fleda, dismayed, could see the thing--something glazed and
piped, on iron pillars, with untidy plants and cane sofas; a shiny
excrescence on the noble face of Poynton. She remembered at Waterbath a
conservatory where she had caught a bad cold in the company of a stuffed
cockatoo fastened to a tropical bough and a waterless fountain composed
of shells stuck into some hardened paste. She asked Mona if her idea
would be to make something like this conservatory; to which Mona
replied: "Oh no, much finer; we haven't got a winter garden at
Waterbath." Fleda wondered if she meant to convey that it was the only
grandeur they lacked, and in a moment Mona went on: "But we have got a
billiard-room--that I will say for us!" There was no billiard-room at
Poynton, but there would evidently be one, and it would have, hung on
its walls, framed at the "Stores," caricature-portraits of celebrities,
taken from a "society-paper."

When the two girls had gone in to breakfast it was for Fleda to see at a
glance that there had been a further passage, of some high color,
between Owen and his mother; and she had turned pale in guessing to what
extremity, at her expense, Mrs. Gereth had found occasion to proceed.
Hadn't she, after her clumsy flight, been pressed upon Owen in still
clearer terms? Mrs. Gereth would practically have said to him: "If
you'll take _her_, I'll move away without a sound. But if you take any
one else, any one I'm not sure of, as I am of her--heaven help me, I'll
fight to the death!" Breakfast, this morning, at Poynton, had be