"Rather! But not till after the public marriage." Mrs. Gereth seemed to
muse; then she brought out: "She'll live there alone."
"Alone?"
"She'll have it to herself."
"He won't live with her?"
"Never! But she's none the less his wife, and you're not," said Mrs.
Gereth, getting up. "Our only chance is the chance she may die."
Fleda appeared to consider: she appreciated her visitor's magnanimous
use of the plural. "Mona won't die," she replied.
"Well, _I_ shall, thank God! Till then"--and with this, for the first
time, Mrs. Gereth put out her hand--"don't desert me."
Fleda took her hand, and her clasp of it was a reiteration of a promise
already given. She said nothing, but her silence was an acceptance as
responsible as the vow of a nun. The next moment something occurred to
her. "I mustn't put myself in your son's way."
Mrs. Gereth gave a dry, flat laugh. "You're prodigious! But how shall
you possibly be more out of it? Owen and I--" She didn't finish her
sentence.
"That's your great feeling about _him_," Fleda said; "but how, after
what has happened, can it be his about you?"
Mrs. Gereth hesitated. "How do you know what has happened? You don't
know what I said to him."
"Yesterday?"
"Yesterday."
They looked at each other with a long, deep gaze. Then, as Mrs. Gereth
seemed again about to speak, the girl, closing her eyes, made a gesture
of strong prohibition. "Don't tell me!"
"Merciful powers, how you worship him!" Mrs. Gereth wonderingly moaned.
It was, for Fleda, the shake that made the cup overflow. She had a
pause, that of the child who takes time to know that he responds to an
accident with pain; then, dropping again on the sofa, she broke into
tears. They were beyond control, they came in long sobs, which for a
moment Mrs. Gereth, almost with an air of indifference, stood hearing
and watching. At last Mrs. Gereth too sank down again. Mrs. Gereth
soundlessly, wearily wept.