le its most uplifted pride. When she
could really see again she was on a sofa in the drawing-room, staring
with intensity at an object soon distinct as the great Italian cabinet
that, at Poynton, had been in the red saloon. Without looking, she was
sure the room was occupied with other objects like it, stuffed with as
many as it could hold of the trophies of her friend's struggle. By this
time the very fingers of her glove, resting on the seat of the sofa, had
thrilled at the touch of an old velvet brocade, a wondrous texture that
she could recognize, would have recognized among a thousand, without
dropping her eyes on it. They stuck to the cabinet with a kind of
dissimulated dread, while she painfully asked herself whether she should
notice it, notice everything, or just pretend not to be affected. How
could she pretend not to be affected, with the very pendants of the
lustres tinkling at her and with Mrs. Gereth, beside her and staring at
her even as she herself stared at the cabinet, hunching up a back like
Atlas under his globe? She was appalled at this image of what Mrs.
Gereth had on her shoulders. That lady was waiting and watching her,
bracing herself, and preparing the same face of confession and defiance
she had shown the day, at Poynton, she had been surprised in the
corridor. It was farcical not to speak; and yet to exclaim, to
participate, would give one a bad sense of being mixed up with a theft.
This ugly word sounded, for herself, in Fleda's silence, and the very
violence of it jarred her into a scared glance, as of a creature
detected, to right and left. But what again the full picture most showed
her was the far-away empty sockets, a scandal of nakedness in high, bare
walls. She at last uttered something formal and incoherent--she didn't
know what: it had no relation to either house. Then she felt Mrs.
Gereth's hand once more on her arm. "I've arranged a charming room for
you--it's really lovely. You'll be very happy there." This was spoken
with extraordinary sweetness and with a smile that meant, "Oh, I know
what you're thinking; but what does it matter when you're so loyally on
my side?" It had come indeed to a question of "sides," Fleda thought,
for the whole place was in battle array. In the soft lamplight, with one
fine feature after another looming up into sombre richness, it defied
her not to pronounce it a triumph of taste. Her passion for beauty
leaped back into life; and was not what now most a