"I'm only thinking she'll be impatient--I mean, you know, to learn what
will have passed between us."
"I see," said Owen, looking at his gloves. "I can give her a day or two,
you know. Of course I didn't come down to sleep," he went on. "The inn
seems a horrid hole. I know all about the trains--having no idea you
were here." Almost as soon as his interlocutress he was struck with the
absence of the visible, in this, as between effect and cause. "I mean
because in that case I should have felt I could stop over. I should have
felt I could talk with you a blessed sight longer than with Mummy."
"We've already talked a long time," smiled Fleda.
"Awfully, haven't we?" He spoke with the stupidity she didn't object to.
Inarticulate as he was, he had more to say; he lingered perhaps because
he was vaguely aware of the want of sincerity in her encouragement to
him to go. "There's one thing, please," he mentioned, as if there might
be a great many others too. "Please don't say anything about Mona."