Page:The Spoils of Poynton (London, William Heinemann, 1897).djvu/211

Rh What business is it of mine what she does? She has her own trouble and her own plan. It's too hideous to watch her and count on her!"

Owen's face, at this, showed a reviving dread, the fear of some darksome process of her mind. "If you speak for yourself I can understand. But why is it hideous for me?"

"Oh, I mean for myself!" Fleda said impatiently.

"I watch her, I count on her: how can I do anything else? If I count on her to let me definitely know how we stand I do nothing in life but what she herself has led straight up to. I never thought of asking you to 'get rid of her' for me, and I never would have spoken to you if I hadn't held that I am rid of her, that she has backed out of the whole thing. Didn't she do so from the moment she began to put it off? I had already applied for the licence; the very invitations were half addressed. Who but she, all of a sudden, demanded an unnatural wait? It was none of my doing; I had never dreamed of anything but coming up to the scratch." Owen grew more and more lucid and more confident of the effect of his lucidity. "She called it 'taking a stand,' to see what mother would do. I told her mother would do what I would make her do; and to that she replied that she would like to see me make her first. I said I would arrange that everything should be all right, and she said she really preferred to arrange it herself. It was a flat refusal to trust me in the smallest degree. Why then had