t her post. If their difference should become public the shame
would be all for the others. If Waterbath thought it could afford to
expose itself, then Waterbath was welcome to the folly. Her fanaticism
gave her a new distinction, and Fleda perceived almost with awe that she
had never carried herself so well. She trod the place like a reigning
queen or a proud usurper; full as it was of splendid pieces, it could
show in these days no ornament so effective as its menaced mistress.

Our young lady's spirit was strangely divided; she had a tenderness for
Owen which she deeply concealed, yet it left her occasion to marvel at
the way a man was made who could care in any relation for a creature
like Mona Brigstock when he had known in any relation a creature like
Adela Gereth. With such a mother to give him the pitch, how could he
take it so low? She wondered that she didn't despise him for this, but
there was something that kept her from it. If there had been nothing
else it would have sufficed that she really found herself from this
moment the medium of communication with him.

"He'll come back to assert himself," Mrs. Gereth had said; and the
following week Owen in fact reappeared. He might merely have written,
Fleda could see, but he had come in person because it was at once
"nicer" for his mother and stronger for his cause. He didn't like the
row, though Mona probably did; if he hadn't a sense of beauty he had
after all a sense of justice; but it was inevitable he should clearly
announce at Poynton the date at which he must look to find the house
vacant. "You don't think I'm rough or hard, do you?" he asked of Fleda,
his impatience shining in his idle eyes as the dining-hour shines in
club-windows. "The place at Ricks stands there with open arms. And then
I give her lots of time. Tell her she can remove everything that belongs
to her." Fleda recognized the elements of what the newspapers call a
deadlock in the circumstance that nothing at Poynton belonged to Mrs.
Gereth either more or less than anything else. She must either take
everything or nothing, and the girl's suggestion was that it might
perhaps be an inspiration to do the latter and begin again on a clean
page. What, however, was the poor woman, in that case, to begin with?
What was she to do at all, on her meagre income, but make the best of
the _objets d'art_ of Ricks, the treasures collected by Mr. Gereth's
maiden aunt? She had never been near the place: for