me now!"

It sounded so like a menace that, with a full divination at last, the
poor girl fell weakly into a chair. "What on earth have you done?"

Mrs. Gereth stood there in all the glory of a great stroke. "I've
settled you." She filled the room, to Fleda's scared vision, with the
glare of her magnificence. "I've sent everything back."

"Everything?" Fleda gasped.

"To the smallest snuff-box. The last load went yesterday. The same
people did it. Poor little Ricks is empty." Then as if, for a crowning
splendor, to check all deprecation, "They're yours, you goose!" Mrs.
Gereth concluded, holding up her handsome head and rubbing her white
hands. Fleda saw that there were tears in her deep eyes.

XVIII

She was slow to take in the announcement, but when she had done so she
felt it to be more than her cup of bitterness would hold. Her bitterness
was her anxiety, the taste of which suddenly sickened her. What had she
become, on the spot, but a traitress to her friend? The treachery
increased with the view of the friend's motive, a motive magnificent as
a tribute to her value. Mrs. Gereth had wished to make sure of her and
had reasoned that there would be no such way as by a large appeal to her
honor. If it be true, as men have declared, that the sense of honor is
weak in women, some of the bearings of this stroke might have thrown a
light on the question. What was now, at all events, put before Fleda was
that she had been made sure of, for the greatness of the surrender
imposed an obligation as great. There was an expression she had heard
used by young men with whom she danced: the only word to fit Mrs.
Gereth's intention was that Mrs. Gereth had designed to "fetch" her. It
was a calculated, it was a crushing bribe; it looked her in the eyes and
said simply: "That's what I do for you!" What Fleda was to do in return
required no pointing out. The sense, at present, of how little she had
done made her almost cry aloud with pain; but her first endeavor, in the
face of the fact, was to keep such a cry from reaching her companion.
How little she had done Mrs. Gereth didn't yet know, and possibly there
would be still some way of turning round before the discovery. On her
own side too Fleda had almost made one: she had known she was wanted,
but she had not after all conceived how magnificently much. She had been
treated by her friend's act as a conscious prize, but what made her a
conscious prize was only the power