Her relation with her wonderful friend had, however, in becoming a new one, begun to shape itself almost wholly on breaches¹ and omissions². Something had dropped out altogether, and the question between them, which time would answer, was whether the change had made them strangers or yokefellows. It was as if at last, for better or worse, they were, in a clearer, cruder air, really to know each other. Fleda wondered how Mrs. Gereth had escaped hating her: there were hours when it seemed that such a feat³ might leave after all a scant⁴ margin⁵ for future accidents. The thing indeed that now came out in its simplicity⁶ was that even in her shrunken state the lady of Ricks was larger than her wrongs. As for the girl herself, she had made up her mind that her feelings had no connection with the case. It was her pretension⁷ that they had never yet emerged from the seclusion⁸ into which, after her friend's visit to her at her sister's, we saw them precipitately⁹ retire: if she should suddenly meet them in straggling procession on the road it would be time enough to deal with them. They were all bundled there together, likes with dislikes and memories with fears; and she had for not thinking of them the excellent reason that she was too occupied with the actual. The actual was not that Owen Gereth had seen his necessity where she had pointed¹⁰ it out; it was that his mother's bare spaces demanded all the tapestry¹¹ that the

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