Rose MacLeod. Alice Brown

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      The girl stood there in the faint radiance of the hall lamp, her eyes downcast, thinking. She had dressed for dinner, though there was only high tea in the old-fashioned house, and delighted grannie beyond words. The old lady said it was as good as a play to her, who never went out, to see a lovely dress trailing about the rooms. Peter, looking at the girl, felt his heart admonish him that here was beauty demanding large return of kindly treatment from the world. Not only must justice be done her, but it must be done lavishly. This was for all their sakes. Electra could not be allowed to lose anything so precious, nor could he lose it either, his small share of tribute. She was speaking, still with that air of pondering:—

      "I must do it myself. I mustn't let you risk anything." Then she turned her full glance on him, and frankly smiled. "Good-night," she said, giving him her hand. "Don't speak of me to her. Don't think of me. I must do it all myself."

V

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      Next morning it was a different Rose he saw, quite cosy and cheerful at the breakfast-table, with no sign of tragedy on her brow. The day was fair, and the mood of the world seemed to him, for no reason, to have lightened. 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.

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