Rose MacLeod. Alice Brown

It was not credible that Electra, of all gracious beings, should sulk outside the general harmony. After breakfast, when Rose had, with a sweet air of service, given grannie her arm to the veranda chair, she returned to Peter, waiting, perhaps for a word with her, in the hall. His hat swung from his hand, and seeing that, she spoke in a low, quick tone.

      "You are going over there. Don't do it."

      "I must. I want to see her."

      "I know. But not yet. Let me see her first. If you talk about me, it will make trouble between you,—not real trouble, perhaps, but something unfortunate, something wrong. I am going myself, now." She pointed out her hat and gloves where she had them ready, and without waiting for him to speak, began pinning on the hat. While she drew on the gloves she looked at him again with her charming smile. "Don't you see," she said, "we can get along better alone—two women? Which house is it?"

      He followed her out and down the steps.

      "I'll go part of the way with you."

      She waved a gay farewell to grannie, busy already at her knitting, and they went down the path. But at the gate she paused.

      "Now," she said, "which way? Which house?"

      "The next one."

      "I see. Among the trees. Now don't come. Whatever happens, don't come. If I am not here to dinner,—if I am never here. You simply must not appear in this. Good-by." She gave her parasol a little reassuring fling, as if it were a weapon that proved her amply armed, and took her swift way along the shaded road.

      Peter stood for a moment watching her. She went straight on, and the resolution of her gait bore sufficient witness to her purpose. He turned about then and went rather disconsolately the other way, which would bring him out at the path to Osmond's plantation.

      Rose, going up the garden path, came upon Electra herself, again dressed in white and among the flower-beds. Whether she hoped her lover would come, and was awaiting him, her face did not tell; but she met Rose with the same calm expectancy. There was ample time for her to walk away, to avoid the interview; but Electra was not the woman to do that. False things, paltering things, were as abhorrent to her in her own conduct as in that of another. So she stood there, her hands at her sides in what she would have called perfect poise, as Rose, very graceful yet flushed and apparently conscious of her task, came on. A pace or two away, she stopped and regarded the other woman with a charming and deprecatory grace.

      "Do guess who I am!" she said, in a delightful appeal. "Peter Grant told you."

      "Won't you come in?" returned Electra, with composure. "Mr. Grant did speak of you."

      Rose felt unreasonably chilled. However little she expected, this was less, in the just civility that was yet a repudiation. They went into the library, where the sun was bright on rows of books, and Electra indicated a seat.

      "Mr. Grant told me a very interesting thing about you," she volunteered, with the same air of establishing a desirable atmosphere.

      "Yes," said Rose rather eagerly. She leaned forward a little, her hands clasped on her parasol top. "Yes. I forbade him to say any more. I wanted to tell you myself."

      Electra's brows quivered perceptibly at the hint of familiar consultation with Peter, but she answered with a responsive grace,—

      "He told me the interesting fact. It is very interesting indeed. We have all followed your father's career with such attention. There is nothing like it."

      "My father!" There was unconsidered wonder in her gaze.

      Electra smiled agreeingly.

      "He means just as much to us over here as he does to you in France—or England. Hasn't he been there speaking within the month?"

      "He is in England now," said Rose still wonderingly, still seeking to finish that phase and escape to her own requirements.

      "Mr. Grant said you speak, at times."

      "I am sorry he said that," Rose declared, recovering herself to an unshaded candor. "I shall never do it again."

      Electra was smiling very winningly.

      "Not over here?" she suggested. "Not before one or two clubs, all women, you know, all thoughtful, all earnest?"

      Rose answered coldly,—

      "I am not in sympathy with the ideas my father talks about."

      "Not with the Brotherhood!"

      "Not as my father talks about it." She grew restive. Under Electra's impenetrable courtesy she was committing herself to declarations that had been, heretofore, sealed in her secret thought. "I want to talk to you," she said desperately, with the winning pathos of a child denied, "not about my father,—about other things."

      "This is always the way," said Electra pleasantly, with her immutable determination behind the words. "He is your father, and your familiarity makes you indifferent to him. There are a million things I should like to know about Markham MacLeod,—what he eats and wears, almost. Couldn't you tell me what induced him—what sudden, vital thing, I mean—to stop his essay-writing and found the Brotherhood?"

      Rose answered coldly, and as if from irresistible impulse,—

      "My father's books never paid."

      Electra gazed at her, with wide-eyed reproach.

      "You don't give that as a reason!"

      Rose had recovered herself and remembered again the things she meant to leave untouched.

      "No," she said, "I don't give it as a reason. I only give it."

      Electra was looking at her, rebuffed and puzzled; then a ray shot through her fog.

      "Ah," she said, "wouldn't it be one of the inconceivable things if we who have followed his work and studied him at a distance knew him better than you who have had the privilege of knowing him at first hand?"

      In spite of herself, Rose answered dryly,—

      "It would be strange."

      But Electra had not heard. There was the sound of wheels on the drive, and she looked out, to see Madam Fulton alighting.

      "Excuse me, one moment," she said. "My grandmother has come home from town."

      When Rose was alone in the room, she put her hand to her throat to soothe its aching. There were tears in her eyes. She seemed to have attempted an impossible task. But presently Electra was entering again, half supporting by the arm a fragile-looking old lady who walked inflexibly, as if she resented that aid. Madam Fulton was always scrupulous in the appointments of her person; but this morning, with the slightly fagged look about her eyes and her careful bonnet a trifle awry, she disclosed the fact that she had dressed in haste for a train. But she seemed very much alive, with the alert responsiveness of those to whom interesting things have happened.

      "I want my grandmother to be as surprised as I am," Electra was saying, with her air of social ease. "Grandmother, who do you think this is? The daughter of Markham MacLeod!" She announced it as if it were great news from a quarter unexplored and wonderful. Rose was on her feet, her pathetic eyes fixed upon the old lady's face. Madam Fulton was regarding her with a frank interest it consoled her to see. It was not, at least, so disproportioned.

      "Dear me!" said the old lady. "Well, your father is a remarkable man. Electra here has all his theories by heart."

      "I wish I had," breathed Electra with a fervency calculated perhaps to distract the talk from other issues.

      "How long have you been in America?" asked the old lady civilly, though not sitting down. She had to realize that she was tired, that it would be the part of prudence to escape to her own room.

      "I have just come," said Rose, in a low, eloquent voice, its tones vibrating with her sense of the unfriendliness that had awaited her.

      "And where are you staying? How did you drift