oaxed them, I made love to them. Oh, I
was inspired--they found me wonderful. I neither ate nor slept, but I
was as calm as I am now. I didn't know what was in me; it was worth
finding out. I'm very remarkable, my dear: I lifted tons with my own
arms. I'm tired, very, very tired; but there's neither a scratch nor a
nick, there isn't a teacup missing." Magnificent both in her exhaustion
and in her triumph, Mrs. Gereth sank on the sofa again, the sweep of her
eyes a rich synthesis and the restless friction of her hands a clear
betrayal. "Upon my word," she laughed, "they really look better here!"

Fleda had listened in awe. "And no one at Poynton said anything? There
was no alarm?"

"What alarm should there have been? Owen left me almost defiantly alone:
I had taken a time that I had reason to believe was safe from a
descent." Fleda had another wonder, which she hesitated to express: it
would scarcely do to ask Mrs. Gereth if she hadn't stood in fear of her
servants. She knew, moreover, some of the secrets of her humorous
household rule, all made up of shocks to shyness and provocations to
curiosity--a diplomacy so artful that several of the maids quite yearned
to accompany her to Ricks. Mrs. Gereth, reading sharply the whole of her
visitor's thought, caught it up with fine frankness. "You mean that I
was watched--that he had his myrmidons, pledged to wire him if they
should see what I was 'up to'? Precisely. I know the three persons you
have in mind: I had them in mind myself. Well, I took a line with
them--I settled them."

Fleda had had no one in particular in mind; she had never believed in
the myrmidons; but the tone in which Mrs. Gereth spoke added to her
suspense. "What did you do to them?"

"I took hold of them hard--I put them in the forefront. I made them
work."

"To move the furniture?"

"To help, and to help so as to please me. That was the way to take them;
it was what they had least expected. I marched up to them and looked
each straight in the eye, giving him the chance to choose if he'd
gratify me or gratify my son. He gratified _me_. They were too stupid!"

Mrs. Gereth massed herself there more and more as an immoral woman, but
Fleda had to recognize that she too would have been stupid and she too
would have gratified her. "And when did all this take place?"

"Only last week; it seems a hundred years. We've worked here as fast as
we worked there, but I'm not settled yet: you'll see in the rest of