The Spoils of Poynton

stuck out of you; it strongly impressed me, and I didn't know at first quite what to make of it. It was that you had just been with him and that you were not natural. Not natural to me,' she added with a smile. 'I pricked up my ears, and all that this might mean dawned upon me when you said you had asked nothing about Mona. It put me on the scent, but I didn't show you, did I? I felt it was in you, deep down, and that I must draw it out. Well, I have drawn it, and it's a blessing. Yesterday, when you shed tears at breakfast, I was awfully puzzled. What has been the matter with you all the while? Why, Fleda, it isn't a crime, don't you know that?' cried the delighted woman. 'When I was a girl I was always in love, and not always with such nice people as Owen. I didn't behave as well as you; compared with you I think I must have been horrid. But if you're proud and reserved, it's your own affair; I'm proud too, though I'm not reserved— that's what spoils it. I'm stupid, above all—that's what I am; so dense that I really blush for it. However, no one but you could have deceived me. If I trusted you, moreover, it was exactly to be cleverer than myself. You must be so now more than ever!' Suddenly Fleda felt her hands grasped: Mrs. Gereth had plumped down at her feet and was leaning on her knees. 'Save him—save him: you can!' she passionately pleaded. 'How could you not like him, when he's such a dear? He is a dear, darling; there's no harm in my own boy! You can do what you will with him—you know you can! What else does he give us all this time for? Get him away from her; it's as if he besought you to, poor wretch! Don't abandon him to such a fate, and I'll never abandon you. Think of him with that creature, that future! If you'll take him I'll give up everything. There, it's a solemn promise, the most sacred of my life! Get the better of her, and he shall have every stick I removed. Give me your word, and I'll accept it. I'll write for the packers to- night!'

Fleda, before this, had fallen forward on her companion's neck, and the two women, clinging together, had got up while the younger wailed on the other's bosom. 'You smooth it down because you see more in it than there can ever be; but after my hideous double game how will you be able to believe in me again?'

'I see in it simply what must be, if you've a single spark of pity. Where on earth was the double game, when you've behaved like such a saint? You've been beautiful, you've been exquisite, and all our trouble is over.'

Fleda, drying her eyes, shook her head ever so sadly. 'No, Mrs. Gereth, it isn't over. I can't do what you ask—I can't meet your condition.'

Mrs. Gereth stared; the cloud gathered in her face again. 'Why, in the name of goodness, when you adore him? I know what you see in him,' she declared in another tone. 'You're right!'

Fleda gave a faint, stubborn smile. 'He cares for her too much.'

'Then why doesn't he marry her? He's giving you an extraordinary chance.'

'He doesn't dream I've ever thought of him,' said Fleda. 'Why should he, if you didn't?'

'It wasn't with me you were in love, my duck.' Then Mrs. Gereth added: 'I'll go and tell him.'

'If you do any such thing, you shall never see me again,—absolutely, literally never!'

Mrs. Gereth looked hard at her young friend, showing she saw she must believe her. 'Then you're perverse, you're wicked. Will you swear he doesn't know?'

'Of course he doesn't know!' cried Fleda indignantly.

Her interlocutress was silent a little. 'And that he has no feeling on his side?'

'For me?' Fleda stared. 'Before he has even married her?'

Mrs. Gereth gave a sharp laugh at this. 'He ought at least to appreciate your wit. Oh, my dear, you are a treasure! Doesn't he appreciate anything? Has he given you absolutely no symptom—not looked a look, not breathed a sigh?'

'The case,' said Fleda coldly, 'is as I've had the honor to state it.'

'Then he's as big a donkey as his mother! But you know you must account for their delay,' Mrs. Gereth remarked.

'Why must I?' Fleda asked after a moment.

'Because you were closeted with him here so long. You can't pretend at present, you know, not to have any art.'

The girl hesitated an instant; she was conscious that she must choose between two risks. She had had a secret and the secret was gone. Owen had one, which was still unbruised, and the greater risk now was that his mother should lay her formidable hand upon it. All Fleda's tenderness for him moved her to protect it; so she faced the smaller peril. 'Their delay,' she brought herself to reply, 'may perhaps be Mona's doing. I mean because he has lost her the things.'

Mrs. Gereth jumped at this. 'So that she'll break altogether if I keep them?'

Fleda winced. 'I've told you what I believe about that. She'll make scenes and conditions; she'll worry him. But she'll hold him fast; she'll never give him up.'

Mrs. Gereth turned it over. 'Well, I'll keep them, to try her,' she finally pronounced; at which Fleda felt quite sick, as if she had given everything and got nothing.

XII

'I must in common decency let him know that I've talked of the matter with you,' she said to her hostess that evening. 'What answer do you wish me to write to him?'

'Write to him that you must see him again,' said Mrs. Gereth.

Fleda looked very blank. 'What on earth am I to see him for?'

'For anything you like.'

The girl would have been struck with the levity of this had she not already, in an hour, felt the extent of the change suddenly wrought in her commerce with her friend—wrought above all, to that friend's view, in her relation to the great issue. The effect of what had followed Owen's visit was to make that relation the very key of the crisis. Pressed upon her, goodness knew, the crisis had been, but it now seemed to put forth big, encircling arms—arms that squeezed till they hurt and she must cry out. It was as if everything at Ricks had been poured into a common receptacle, a public ferment of emotion and zeal, out of which it was ladled up to be tasted and talked about; everything at least but the one little treasure of knowledge that she kept back. She ought to have liked this, she