tried to keep the acknowledgement of it from trembling
in her voice as she said to him with more surprise than she really felt:
"You've then reopened relations with her?"

"It's she who has reopened them with me. I got her letter this morning.
She told me you were here and that she wished me to know it. She didn't
say much; she just gave me your address. I wrote her back, you know,
'Thanks no end. Shall go to-day.' So we _are_ in correspondence again,
aren't we? She means of course that you've something to tell me from
her, eh? But if you have, why haven't you let a fellow know?" He waited
for no answer to this, he had so much to say. "At your house, just now,
they told me how long you've been here. Haven't you known all the while
that I'm counting the hours? I left a word for you--that I would be back
at six; but I'm awfully glad to have caught you so much sooner. You
don't mean to say you're not going home!" he exclaimed in dismay. "The
young woman there told me you went out early."

"I've been out a very short time," said Fleda, who had hung back with
the general purpose of making things difficult for him. The street would
make them difficult; she could trust the street. She reflected in time,
however, that to betray to him she was afraid to admit him would give
him more a feeling of facility than of anything else. She moved on with
him after a moment, letting him direct their course to her door, which
was only round a corner: she considered as they went that it might not
prove such a stroke to have been in London so long and yet not to have
called him. She desired he should feel she was perfectly simple with
him, and there was no simplicity in that. None the less, on the steps of
the house, though she had a key, she rang the bell; and while they
waited together and she averted her face she looked straight into the
depths of what Mrs. Gereth had meant by giving him the "tip." This had
been perfidious, had been monstrous of Mrs. Gereth, and Fleda wondered
if her letter had contained only what Owen repeated.

XIV

When Owen and Fleda were in her father's little place and, among the
brandy-flasks and pen-wipers, still more disconcerted and divided, the
girl--to do something, though it would make him stay--had ordered tea,
he put the letter before her quite as if he had guessed her thought.
"She's still a bit nasty--fancy!" He handed her the scrap of a note
which he had pulled out of his pocket and from its en