relations who needn't put her
to expense. She was a magnificent dead weight; there was something
positive and portentous in her quietude. "What game are they all
playing?" poor Fleda could only ask; for she had an intimate conviction
that Owen was now under the roof of his betrothed. That was stupefying
if he really hated Mona; and if he didn't really hate her what had
brought him to Raphael Road and to Maggie's? Fleda had no real light,
but she felt that to account for the absence of any result of their last
meeting would take a supposition of the full sacrifice to charity that
she had held up before him. If he had gone to Waterbath it had been
simply because he had to go. She had as good as told him that he would
have to go; that this was an inevitable incident of his keeping perfect
faith--faith so literal that the smallest subterfuge would always be a
reproach to him. When she tried to remember that it was for herself he
was taking his risk, she felt how weak a way that was of expressing
Mona's supremacy. There would be no need of keeping him up if there were
nothing to keep him up to. Her eyes grew wan as she discerned in the
impenetrable air that Mona's thick outline never wavered an inch. She
wondered fitfully what Mrs. Gereth had by this time made of it, and
reflected with a strange elation that the sand on which the mistress of
Ricks had built a momentary triumph was quaking beneath the surface. As
The Morning Post still held its peace, she would be, of course, more
confident; but the hour was at hand at which Owen would have absolutely
to do either one thing or the other. To keep perfect faith was to inform
against his mother, and to hear the police at her door would be Mrs.
Gereth's awakening. How much she was beguiled Fleda could see from her
having been for a whole month quite as deep and dark as Mona. She had
let her young friend alone because of the certitude, cultivated at
Ricks, that Owen had done the opposite. He had done the opposite indeed,
but much good had that brought forth! To have sent for her now, Fleda
felt, was from this point of view wholly natural: she had sent for her
to show at last how much she had scored. If, however, Owen was really at
Waterbath the refutation of that boast was easy.

Fleda found Mrs. Gereth in modest apartments and with an air of fatigue
in her distinguished face--a sign, as she privately remarked, of the
strain of that effort to be discreet of which she herself had b