"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."