Page:The Spoils of Poynton (London, William Heinemann, 1897).djvu/107

Rh Owen Gereth. "Of course it makes all the difference!" she said in answer to his last words. She pursued, after considering: "What you wish me to say from you then to your mother is that you demand immediate and practically complete restitution?"

"Yes, please. It's tremendously good of you."

"Very well, then. Will you wait?"

"For Mummy's answer?" Owen stared and looked perplexed; he was more and more fevered with so much vivid expression of his case. "Don't you think that if I'm here she may hate it worse—think I may want to make her reply bang off?"

Fleda thought. "You don't, then?"

"I want to take her in the right way, don't you know?—treat her as if I gave her more than just an hour or two."

"I see," said Fleda. "Then if you don't wait—good-bye."

This again seemed not what he wanted. "Must you do it bang off?"

"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 horrible 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