el remarks he
might have to make: she only pitied her poor young friend for repeated
encounters with a person as to whom she perfectly understood the girl's
repulsion. Fleda thought it nice of Owen not to have expected her to
write to him; he wouldn't have wished any more than herself that she
should have the air of spying on his mother in his interest. What made
it comfortable to deal with him in this more familiar way was the sense
that she understood so perfectly how poor Mrs. Gereth suffered, and that
she measured so adequately the sacrifice the other side did take rather
monstrously for granted. She understood equally how Owen himself
suffered, now that Mona had already begun to make him do things he
didn't like. Vividly Fleda apprehended how _she_ would have first made
him like anything she would have made him do; anything even as
disagreeable as this appearing there to state, virtually on Mona's
behalf, that of course there must be a definite limit to the number of
articles appropriated. She took a longish stroll with him in order to
talk the matter over; to say if she didn't think a dozen pieces, chosen
absolutely at will, would be a handsome allowance; and above all to
consider the very delicate question of whether the advantage enjoyed by
Mrs. Gereth mightn't be left to her honor. To leave it so was what Owen
wished; but there was plainly a young lady at Waterbath to whom, on his
side, he already had to render an account. He was as touching in his
offhand annoyance as his mother was tragic in her intensity; for if he
couldn't help having a sense of propriety about the whole matter, so he
could as little help hating it. It was for his hating it, Fleda
reasoned, that she liked him so, and her insistence to his mother on the
hatred perilously resembled, on one or two occasions, a revelation of
the liking. There were moments when, in conscience, that revelation
pressed her; inasmuch as it was just on the ground of her not liking him
that Mrs. Gereth trusted her so much. Mrs. Gereth herself didn't in
these days like him at all, and she was of course and always on Mrs.
Gereth's side. He ended really, while the preparations for his marriage
went on, by quite a little custom of coming and going; but on no one of
these occasions would his mother receive him. He talked only with Fleda
and strolled with Fleda; and when he asked her, in regard to the great
matter, if Mrs. Gereth were really doing nothing, the girl usually