ared for, was a
subject for poetry, for idolatry. Hadn't she often told Fleda of her
friend Madame de Jaume, the wittiest of women, but a small, black,
crooked person, each of whose three boys, when absent, wrote to her
every day of their lives? She had the house in Paris, she had the house
in Poitou, she had more than in the lifetime of her husband (to whom, in
spite of her appearance, she had afforded repeated cause for jealousy),
because she had to the end of her days the supreme word about
everything. It was easy to see that Mrs. Gereth would have given again
and again her complexion, her figure, and even perhaps the spotless
virtue she had still more successfully retained, to have been the
consecrated Madame de Jaume. She wasn't, alas, and this was what she had
at present a magnificent occasion to protest against. She was of course
fully aware of Owen's concession, his willingness to let her take away
with her the few things she liked best; but as yet she only declared
that to meet him on this ground would be to give him a triumph, to put
him impossibly in the right. "Liked best"? There wasn't a thing in the
house that she didn't like best, and what she liked better still was to
be left where she was. How could Owen use such an expression without
being conscious of his hypocrisy? Mrs. Gereth, whose criticism was often
gay, dilated with sardonic humor on the happy look a dozen objects from
Poynton would wear and the charming effect they would conduce to when
interspersed with the peculiar features of Ricks. What had her whole
life been but an effort toward completeness and perfection? Better
Waterbath at once, in its cynical unity, than the ignominy of such a
mixture!

All this was of no great help to Fleda, in so far as Fleda tried to rise
to her mission of finding a way out. When at the end of a fortnight Owen
came down once more, it was ostensibly to tackle a farmer whose
proceedings had been irregular; the girl was sure, however, that he had
really come, on the instance of Mona, to see what his mother was doing.
He wished to satisfy himself that she was preparing her departure, and
he wished to perform a duty, distinct but not less imperative, in regard
to the question of the perquisites with which she would retreat. The
tension between them was now such that he had to perpetrate these
offenses without meeting his adversary. Mrs. Gereth was as willing as
himself that he should address to Fleda Vetch whatever cru