Chapter XI

The sense of her dryness, which was ominous of a complication, made Fleda, before complying, linger a little on the terrace: she felt the need moreover of taking breath after such a flight into the cold air of denial. When at last she rejoined...

Chapter VI

It was a great relief to the girl at last to feel sine that the dreadful move would really be made. What might happen if it shouldn’t had been from the first indefinite. It was absurd to pretend that any violence was probable—a tussle,...

Chapter XX

There came to her at her sister’s no telegram in answer to her own: the rest of that day and the whole of the next elapsed without a word either from Owen or from his mother. She was free, however, to her infinite relief,...

Chapter XVII

Ten days after his visit she received a communication from Mrs Gereth—a telegram of eight words, exclusive of signature and date. ‘Come up immediately and stay with me here’—it was characteristically sharp, as Maggie said; but, as Maggie added, it was also...

Chapter II

These were neither more nor less than the things with which she had had time to learn from Mrs Gereth that Poynton overflowed. Poynton, in the south of England, was this lady’s established, or rather her disestablished, home: it had recently passed into the...

Chapter XIV

When they had passed together into her father’s little place and, among the brandy-flasks and pen-wipers, still more disconcerted and divided, the girl—to do something, though it would make him stay—had ordered tea, he put the letter before her quite as if he had...

Chapter VIII

‘I asked for you,’ he said when she stood there, ‘because I heard from the flyman who drove me from the station to the inn that he had brought you here yesterday. We had some talk—he mentioned it.’ ‘You didn’t know I was here?’...

Chapter IV

A week later Owen came down to inform his mother he had settled with Mona Brigstock; but it was not at all a joy to Fleda, aware of how much to himself it would be a surprise, that he should find her still in...

Chapter XVIII

Fleda was slow to take in the announcement, but when she had done so she felt it to be more than her cup of bitterness would hold. Her bitterness was her anxiety, the taste of which suddenly sickened her. What had she on the...

Chapter VII

AS soon as her sister had been married she went down to Mrs Gereth at Ricks—a promise to this effect having been promptly exacted and given; and her inner vision was much more fixed on the alterations there, complete now as she understood, than...