"I'll give up the house if they'll let me take what I require!" That, on the morrow, was what Mrs. Gereth's stifled¹ night had qualified² her to say, with a tragic³ face, at breakfast. Fleda reflected that what she "required" was simply every object that surrounded them. The poor woman would have admitted this truth and accepted the conclusion to be drawn⁴ from it, the reduction to the absurd of her attitude, the exaltation of her revolt. The girl's dread⁵ of a scandal, of spectators and critics, diminished the more she saw how little vulgar avidity had to do with this rigor⁶. It was not the crude love of possession; it was the need to be faithful to a trust and loyal to an idea. The idea was surely noble: it was that of the beauty Mrs. Gereth had so patiently and consummately⁷ wrought⁸. Pale but radiant, with her back to the wall, she rose there like a heroine guarding a treasure. To give up the ship was to flinch⁹ from her duty; there was something in her eyes that declared she would die at her post. If their difference should become public the shame would be all for the others. If Waterbath thought it could afford to expose itself, then Waterbath was welcome to the folly¹⁰. Her fanaticism¹¹ gave her a new distinction, and Fleda perceived almost with awe¹² that she had never carried herself so well. She trod the place like a reigning¹³ queen or a proud usurper¹⁴; full as it was of splendid pieces, it could show in these days no ornament¹⁵ so effective as its menaced mistress.  
Our young lady's spirit was strangely divided; she had a tenderness for Owen which she deeply concealed¹⁶, yet it left her occasion to marvel¹⁷ at the way a man was made who could care in any relation for a creature like Mona Brigstock when he had known in any relation a creature like Adela Gereth. With such a mother to give him the pitch, how could he take it so low? She wondered that she didn't despise him for this, but there was something that kept her from it. If there had been nothing else it would have sufficed that she really found herself from this moment the medium of communication with him.
 
"He'll come back to assert himself," Mrs. Gereth had said; and the following week Owen in fact reappeared. He might merely have written, Fleda could see, but he had come in person because it was at once "nicer" for his mother and stronger for his cause. He didn't like the row, though Mona probably did; if he hadn't a sense of beauty he had after all a sense of justice; but it was inevitable¹⁸ he should clearly announce at Poynton the date at which he must look to find the house vacant. "You don't think I'm rough or hard, do you?" he asked of Fleda, his impatience¹⁹ shining in his idle eyes as the dining-hour shines in club-windows. "The place at Ricks stands there with open arms. And then I give her lots of time. Tell her she can remove everything that belongs to her." Fleda recognized the elements of what the newspapers call a deadlock²⁰ in the circumstance that nothing at Poynton belonged to Mrs. Gereth either more or less than anything else. She must either take everything or nothing, and the girl's suggestion was that it might perhaps be an inspiration to do the latter and begin again on a clean page. What, however, was the poor woman, in that case, to begin with? What was she to do at all, on her meagre income, but make the best of the objets d'art of Ricks, the treasures collected by Mr. Gereth's maiden²¹ aunt? She had never been near the place: for long years it had been let to strangers, and after that the foreboding that it would be her doom²² had kept her from the abasement²³ of it. She had felt that she should see it soon enough, but Fleda (who was careful not to betray to her that Mona had seen it and had been gratified) knew her reasons for believing that the maiden aunt's principles had had much in common with the principles of Waterbath. The only thing, in short, that she would ever have to do with the objets d'art of Ricks would be to turn them out into the road. What belonged to her at Poynton, as Owen said, would conveniently mitigate²⁴ the void resulting from that demonstration²⁵.
 
The exchange of observations between the friends had grown very direct by the time Fleda asked Mrs. Gereth whether she literally²⁶ meant to shut herself up and stand a siege, or whether it was her idea to expose herself, more informally, to be dragged out of the house by constables²⁷. "Oh, I prefer the constables and the dragging!" the heroine of Poynton had answered. "I want to make Owen and Mona do everything that will be most publicly odious²⁸." She gave it out that it was her one thought now to force them to a line that would dishonor them and dishonor the tradition they embodied²⁹, though Fleda was privately³⁰ sure that she had visions of an alternative policy. The strange thing was that, proud and fastidious all her life, she now showed so little distaste for the world's hearing of the squabble. What had taken place in her above all was that a long resentment³¹ had ripened³². She hated the effacement³³ to which English usage reduced the widowed mother: she had discoursed³⁴ of it passionately³⁵ to Fleda; contrasted it with the beautiful homage³⁶ paid in other countries to women in that position, women no better than herself, whom she had seen acclaimed³⁷ and enthroned, whom she had known and envied; made in short as little as possible a secret of the injury, the bitterness she found in it. The great wrong Owen had done her was not his "taking up" with Mona—that was disgusting, but it was a detail, an accidental form: it was his failure from the first to understand what it was to have a mother at all, to appreciate the beauty and sanctity of the character. She was just his mother as his nose was just his nose, and he had never had the least imagination or tenderness or gallantry about her. One's mother, gracious heaven, if one were the kind of fine young man one ought to be, the only kind Mrs. Gereth cared for, was a subject for poetry, for idolatry. Hadn't she often told Fleda of her friend Madame de Jaume, the wittiest³⁸ of women, but a small, black, crooked³⁹ person, each of whose three boys, when absent, wrote to her every day of their lives? She had the house in Paris, she had the house in Poitou, she had more than in the lifetime of her husband (to whom, in spite of her appearance, she had afforded repeated cause for jealousy), because she had to the end of her days the supreme⁴⁰ word about everything. It was easy to see that Mrs. Gereth would have given again and again her complexion⁴¹, her figure, and even perhaps the spotless virtue⁴² she had still more successfully retained, to have been the consecrated⁴⁴ Madame de Jaume. She wasn't, alas⁴⁵, and this was what she had at present a magnificent occasion to protest against. She was of course fully⁴³ aware of Owen's concession⁴⁶, his willingness to let her take away with her the few things she liked best; but as yet she only declared that to meet him on this ground would be to give him a triumph, to put him impossibly in the right. "Liked best"? There wasn't a thing in the house that she didn't like best, and what she liked better still was to be left where she was. How could Owen use such an expression without being conscious of his hypocrisy⁴⁷? Mrs. Gereth, whose criticism was often gay, dilated⁴⁸ with sardonic⁴⁹ humor on the happy look a dozen objects from Poynton would wear and the charming effect they would conduce to when interspersed⁵⁰ with the peculiar⁵¹ features of Ricks. What had her whole life been but an effort toward completeness and perfection? Better Waterbath at once, in its cynical⁵² unity⁵³, than the ignominy of such a mixture!
 
All this was of no great help to Fleda, in so far as Fleda tried to rise to her mission of finding a way out. When at the end of a fortnight Owen came down once more, it was ostensibly to tackle a farmer whose proceedings⁵⁴ had been irregular; the girl was sure, however, that he had really come, on the instance of Mona, to see what his mother was doing. He wished to satisfy himself that she was preparing her departure, and he wished to perform a duty, distinct but not less imperative⁵⁵, in regard to the question of the perquisites⁵⁶ with which she would retreat. The tension between them was now such that he had to perpetrate these offenses⁵⁷ without meeting his adversary⁵⁸. Mrs. Gereth was as willing as himself that he should address to Fleda Vetch whatever cruel remarks he might have to make: she only pitied her poor young friend for repeated encounters with a person as to whom she perfectly⁵⁹ understood the girl's repulsion. Fleda thought it nice of Owen not to have expected her to write to him; he wouldn't have wished any more than herself that she should have the air of spying on his mother in his interest. What made it comfortable to deal with him in this more familiar way was the sense that she understood so perfectly how poor Mrs. Gereth suffered, and that she measured so adequately the sacrifice the other side did take rather monstrously⁶⁰ for granted. She understood equally how Owen himself suffered, now that Mona had already begun to make him do things he didn't like. Vividly⁶¹ Fleda apprehended⁶² how she would have first made him like anything she would have made him do; anything even as disagreeable as this appearing there to state, virtually on Mona's behalf, that of course there must be a definite limit to the number of articles appropriated. She took a longish stroll with him in order to talk the matter over; to say if she didn't think a dozen pieces, chosen absolutely at will, would be a handsome allowance; and above all to consider the very delicate question of whether the advantage enjoyed by Mrs. Gereth mightn't be left to her honor. To leave it so was what Owen wished; but there was plainly a young lady at Waterbath to whom, on his side, he already had to render an account. He was as touching⁶³ in his offhand⁶⁴ annoyance⁶⁵ as his mother was tragic in her intensity⁶⁶; for if he couldn't help having a sense of propriety⁶⁷ about the whole matter, so he could as little help hating it. It was for his hating it, Fleda reasoned, that she liked him so, and her insistence⁶⁸ to his mother on the hatred⁶⁹ perilously⁷⁰ resembled, on one or two occasions, a revelation of the liking⁷¹. There were moments when, in conscience, that revelation pressed her; inasmuch as it was just on the ground of her not liking him that Mrs. Gereth trusted her so much. Mrs. Gereth herself didn't in these days like him at all, and she was of course and always on Mrs. Gereth's side. He ended really, while the preparations for his marriage went on, by quite a little custom of coming and going; but on no one of these occasions would his mother receive him. He talked only with Fleda and strolled with Fleda; and when he asked her, in regard to the great matter, if Mrs. Gereth were really doing nothing, the girl usually replied: "She pretends not to be, if I may say so; but I think she's really thinking over what she'll take." When her friend asked her what Owen was doing, she could have but one answer: "He's waiting, dear lady, to see what you do!"
 
Mrs. Gereth, a month after she had received her great shock, did something abrupt⁷² and extraordinary: she caught up her companion and went to have a look at Ricks. They had come to London first and taken a train from Liverpool Street, and the least of the sufferings they were armed against was that of passing the night. Fleda's admirable dressing-bag had been given her by her friend. "Why, it's charming!" she exclaimed a few hours later, turning back again into the small prim⁷³ parlor⁷⁴ from a friendly advance to the single plate of the window. Mrs. Gereth hated such windows, the one flat glass, sliding up and down, especially when they enjoyed a view of four iron pots on pedestals, painted white and containing ugly geraniums, ranged on the edge of a gravel-path and doing their best to give it the air of a terrace. Fleda had instantly averted⁷⁵ her eyes from these ornaments⁷⁶, but Mrs. Gereth grimly gazed, wondering of course how a place in the deepest depths of Essex and three miles from a small station could contrive⁷⁷ to look so suburban⁷⁸. The room was practically a shallow box, with the junction⁷⁹ of the walls and ceiling guiltless of curve or cornice and marked merely by the little band of crimson⁸⁰ paper glued round the top of the other paper, a turbid⁸¹ gray sprigged with silver flowers. This decoration was rather new and quite fresh; and there was in the centre of the ceiling a big square beam papered over in white, as to which Fleda hesitated about venturing to remark that it was rather picturesque⁸². She recognized in time that this remark would be weak and that, throughout, she should be able to say nothing either for the mantelpieces or for the doors, of which she saw her companion become sensible with a soundless moan. On the subject of doors especially Mrs. Gereth had the finest views: the thing in the world she most despised was the meanness of the single flap. From end to end, at Poynton, there were high double leaves. At Ricks the entrances to the rooms were like the holes of rabbit-hutches.
 
It was all, none the less, not so bad as Fleda had feared; it was faded and melancholy⁸³, whereas there had been a danger that it would be contradictious and positive, cheerful and loud. The house was crowded with objects of which the aggregation⁸⁴ somehow made a thinness and the futility⁸⁵ a grace; things that told her they had been gathered as slowly and as lovingly as the golden flowers of Poynton. She too, for a home, could have lived with them: they made her fond of the old maiden-aunt; they made her even wonder if it didn't work more for happiness not to have tasted, as she herself had done, of knowledge. Without resources, without a stick, as she said, of her own, Fleda was moved, after all, to some secret surprise at the pretensions⁸⁶ of a shipwrecked woman who could hold such an asylum⁸⁷ cheap. The more she looked about the surer she felt of the character of the maiden-aunt, the sense of whose dim presence urged her to pacification⁸⁸: the maiden-aunt had been a dear; she would have adored the maiden-aunt. The poor lady had had some tender little story; she had been sensitive and ignorant and exquisite⁸⁹: that too was a sort of origin, a sort of atmosphere for relics⁹⁰ and rarities, though different from the sorts most prized at Poynton. Mrs. Gereth had of course more than once said that one of the deepest mysteries of life was the way that, by certain natures, hideous⁹¹ objects could be loved; but it wasn't a question of love, now, for these: it was only a question of a certain practical patience. Perhaps some thought of that kind had stolen over Mrs. Gereth when, at the end of a brooding hour, she exclaimed, taking in the house with a strenuous⁹² sigh: "Well, something can be done with it!" Fleda had repeated to her more than once the indulgent fancy about the maiden-aunt—she was so sure she had deeply suffered. "I'm sure I hope she did!" was, however, all that Mrs. Gereth had replied.