f any light they might shed on the question of motive, of
not suffering her invidious expression of a difference to be accompanied
by the traces of tears; but it none the less came to pass, downstairs,
that after she had subtly put her back to the window, to make a mystery
of the state of her eyes, she stupidly let a rich sob escape her before
she could properly meet the consequences of being asked if she wasn't
delighted with her room. This accident struck her on the spot as so
grave that she felt the only refuge to be instant hypocrisy, some
graceful impulse that would charge her emotion to the quickened sense of
her friend's generosity--a demonstration entailing a flutter round the
table and a renewed embrace, and not so successfully improvised but that
Fleda fancied Mrs. Gereth to have been only half reassured. She had been
startled, at any rate, and she might remain suspicious: this reflection
interposed by the time, after breakfast, the girl had recovered
sufficiently to say what was in her heart. She accordingly didn't say it
that morning at all: she had absurdly veered about; she had encountered
the shock of the fear that Mrs. Gereth, with sharpened eyes, might
wonder why the deuce (she often wondered in that phrase) she had grown
so warm about Owen's rights. She would doubtless, at a pinch, be able to
defend them on abstract grounds, but that would involve a discussion,
and the idea of a discussion made her nervous for her secret. Until in
some way Poynton should return the blow and give her a cue, she must
keep nervousness down; and she called herself a fool for having
forgotten, however briefly, that her one safety was in silence.

Directly after luncheon Mrs. Gereth took her into the garden for a
glimpse of the revolution--or at least, said the mistress of Ricks, of
the great row--that had been decreed there; but the ladies had scarcely
placed themselves for this view before the younger one found herself
embracing a prospect that opened in quite another quarter. Her attention
was called to it, oddly, by the streamers of the parlor-maid's cap,
which, flying straight behind the neat young woman who unexpectedly
burst from the house and showed a long red face as she ambled over the
grass, seemed to articulate in their flutter the name that Fleda lived
at present only to catch. "Poynton--Poynton!" said the morsels of
muslin; so that the parlor-maid became on the instant an actress in the
drama, and Fleda, assumin