ght let you pick out the things to
which you're most attached."

"I think he would if he were free," said Mrs. Gereth.

"And do you mean, as it is, that _she_'ll prevent him?" Mona Brigstock,
between these ladies, was now nothing but "she."

"By every means in her power."

"But surely not because she understands and appreciates them?"

"No," Mrs. Gereth replied, "but because they belong to the house and the
house belongs to Owen. If I should wish to take anything, she would
simply say, with that motionless mask: 'It goes with the house.' And day
after day, in the face of every argument, of every consideration of
generosity, she would repeat, without winking, in that voice like the
squeeze of a doll's stomach: 'It goes with the house--it goes with the
house.' In that attitude they'll shut themselves up."

Fleda was struck, was even a little startled with the way Mrs. Gereth
had turned this over--had faced, if indeed only to recognize its
futility, the notion of a battle with her only son. These words led her
to make an inquiry which she had not thought it discreet to make before;
she brought out the idea of the possibility, after all, of her friend's
continuing to live at Poynton. Would they really wish to proceed to
extremities? Was no good-humored, graceful compromise to be imagined or
brought about? Couldn't the same roof cover them? Was it so very
inconceivable that a married son should, for the rest of her days, share
with so charming a mother the home she had devoted more than a score of
years to making beautiful for him? Mrs. Gereth hailed this question with
a wan, compassionate smile; she replied that a common household, in such
a case, was exactly so inconceivable that Fleda had only to glance over
the fair face of the English land to see how few people had ever
conceived it. It was always thought a wonder, a "mistake," a piece of
overstrained sentiment; and she confessed that she was as little capable
of a flight of that sort as Owen himself. Even if they both had been
capable, they would still have Mona's hatred to reckon with. Fleda's
breath was sometimes taken away by the great bounds and elisions which,
on Mrs. Gereth's lips, the course of discussion could take. This was the
first she had heard of Mona's hatred, though she certainly had not
needed Mrs. Gereth to tell her that in close quarters that young lady
would prove secretly mulish. Later Fleda perceived indeed that perhaps
almost any girl would