judge and even a reason to loathe her, didn't judge and didn't
loathe, let her down gently, treated her as if she pleased him, and in
fact evidently liked her to be just where she was. She asked herself
what he did when Mona denounced her, and the only answer to the question
was that perhaps Mona didn't denounce her. If Mona was inarticulate he
wasn't such a fool, then, to marry her. That he was glad Fleda was there
was at any rate sufficiently shown by the domestic familiarity with
which he said to her: "I must tell you I've been having an awful row
with my mother. I'm engaged to be married to Miss Brigstock."

"Ah, really?" cried Fleda, achieving a radiance of which she was
secretly proud. "How very exciting!"

"Too exciting for poor Mummy. She won't hear of it. She has been slating
her fearfully. She says she's a 'barbarian.'"

"Why, she's lovely!" Fleda exclaimed.

"Oh, she's all right. Mother must come round."

"Only give her time," said Fleda. She had advanced to the threshold of
the door thus thrown open to her and, without exactly crossing it, she
threw in an appreciative glance. She asked Owen when his marriage would
take place, and in the light of his reply read that Mrs. Gereth's
wretched attitude would have no influence at all on the event,
absolutely fixed when he came down, and distant by only three months. He
liked Fleda's seeming to be on his side, though that was a secondary
matter, for what really most concerned him now was the line his mother
took about Poynton, her declared unwillingness to give it up.

"Naturally I want my own house, you know," he said, "and my father made
every arrangement for me to have it. But she may make it devilish
awkward. What in the world's a fellow to do?" This it was that Owen
wanted to know, and there could be no better proof of his friendliness
than his air of depending on Fleda Vetch to tell him. She questioned
him, they spent an hour together, and, as he gave her the scale of the
concussion from which he had rebounded, she found herself saddened and
frightened by the material he seemed to offer her to deal with. It _was_
devilish awkward, and it was so in part because Owen had no imagination.
It had lodged itself in that empty chamber that his mother hated the
surrender because she hated Mona. He didn't of course understand why she
hated Mona, but this belonged to an order of mysteries that never
troubled him: there were lots of things, especially in people's mi