me? Most distinctly not!"

The question had not come up with this definiteness before, and Mrs.
Gereth was clearly more surprised than ever. She marveled a moment. "Not
even to have Poynton?"

"Not even to have Poynton."

"But why on earth?" Mrs. Gereth's sad eyes were fixed on her.

Fleda colored; she hesitated. "Because he's too stupid!" Save on one
other occasion, at which we shall in time arrive, little as the reader
may believe it, she never came nearer to betraying to Mrs. Gereth that
she was in love with Owen. She found a dim amusement in reflecting that
if Mona had not been there and he had not been too stupid and he verily
had asked her, she might, should she have wished to keep her secret,
have found it possible to pass off the motive of her action as a mere
passion for Poynton.

Mrs. Gereth evidently thought in these days of little but things
hymeneal; for she broke out with sudden rapture, in the middle of the
week: "I know what they'll do: they _will_ marry, but they'll go and
live at Waterbath!" There was positive joy in that form of the idea,
which she embroidered and developed: it seemed so much the safest thing
that could happen. "Yes, I'll have you, but I won't go _there_!" Mona
would have said with a vicious nod at the southern horizon: "we'll leave
your horrid mother alone there for life." It would be an ideal solution,
this ingress the lively pair, with their spiritual need of a warmer
medium, would playfully punch in the ribs of her ancestral home; for it
would not only prevent recurring panic at Poynton--it would offer them,
as in one of their gimcrack baskets or other vessels of ugliness, a
definite daily felicity that Poynton could never give. Owen might manage
his estate just as he managed it now, and Mrs. Gereth would manage
everything else. When, in the hall, on the unforgettable day of his
return, she had heard his voice ring out like a call to a terrier, she
had still, as Fleda afterwards learned, clutched frantically at the
conceit that he had come, at the worst, to announce some compromise; to
tell her she would have to put up with the girl, yes, but that some way
would be arrived at of leaving her in personal possession. Fleda Vetch,
whom from the first hour no illusion had brushed with its wing, now held
her breath, went on tiptoe, wandered in outlying parts of the house and
through delicate, muffled rooms, while the mother and son faced each
other below. From time to time she stop