g pusillanimously that she herself was only a
spectator, looked across the footlights at the exponent of the principal
part. The manner in which this artist returned her look showed that she
was equally preoccupied. Both were haunted alike by possibilities, but
the apprehension of neither, before the announcement was made, took the
form of the arrival at Ricks, in the flesh, of Mrs. Gereth's victim.
When the messenger informed them that Mr. Gereth was in the
drawing-room, the blank "Oh!" emitted by Fleda was quite as precipitate
as the sound on her hostess's lips, besides being, as she felt, much
less pertinent. "I thought it would be somebody," that lady afterwards
said; "but I expected on the whole a solicitor's clerk." Fleda didn't
mention that she herself had expected on the whole a pair of constables.
She was surprised by Mrs. Gereth's question to the parlor-maid.

"For whom did he ask?"

"Why, for _you_, of course, dearest friend!" Fleda interjected, falling
instinctively into the address that embodied the intensest pressure. She
wanted to put Mrs. Gereth between her and her danger.

"He asked for Miss Vetch, mum," the girl replied, with a face that
brought startlingly to Fleda's ear the muffled chorus of the kitchen.

"Quite proper," said Mrs. Gereth austerely. Then to Fleda: "Please go to
him."

"But what to do?"

"What you always do--to see what he wants." Mrs. Gereth dismissed the
maid. "Tell him Miss Vetch will come." Fleda saw that nothing was in the
mother's imagination at this moment but the desire not to meet her son.
She had completely broken with him, and there was little in what had
just happened to repair the rupture. It would now take more to do so
than his presenting himself uninvited at her door. "He's right in asking
for you--he's aware that you're still our communicator; nothing has
occurred to alter that. To what he wishes to transmit through you I'm
ready, as I've been ready before, to listen. As far as _I_'m concerned,
if I couldn't meet him a month ago, how am I to meet him to-day? If he
has come to say, 'My dear mother, you're here, in the hovel into which
I've flung you, with consolations that give me pleasure,' I'll listen to
him; but on no other footing. That's what you're to ascertain, please.
You'll oblige me as you've obliged me before. There!" Mrs. Gereth turned
her back and, with a fine imitation of superiority, began to redress the
miseries immediately before her. Fleda meanwh