Rose MacLeod

								

notes, had a clear, full resonance. Then she laid the letter down. "I
beg your pardon," she added. "I thought you were opening your mail."
"No! no!" Madam Fulton cried, in a new impatience. "Go on. Read your
letter. Don't mind me."
But the girl was pushing it aside. She looked across the table with her
direct glance, and Madam Fulton thought unwillingly how handsome she
was. Electra was young, and she lacked but one thing: a girl's uncertain
grace. She had all the freshness of youth with the poise of ripest
womanhood. She sat straight and well, and seemed to manage her position
at table as if it were a horse. Her profile was slightly aquiline and
her complexion faultless in its fairness and its testimony to wholesome
living. Her lips were rather thin, but the line of white teeth behind
them showed exquisitely. She had a great deal of fine brown hair wound
about her head in braids, in an imperial fashion. Perhaps the only fault
in her face was that her eyes were of a light and not sympathetic blue.
"Shall I open your mail, grandmother?" she asked with extreme deference.
Madam Fulton's hand was lying on a disordered pile of letters, twenty
deep, beside her plate. She pressed the hand a little closer.
"No, thank you," she said. "I will attend to them myself."
Electra laid down her napkin, and pushed her plate to one side, to give
space for her own papers. She lifted one sheet, and holding it in her
fine hands, began rather elegantly,--
"Grandmother, I have here a most interesting letter from Mrs. Furnivall
Williams. She speaks of your book in the highest praise."
"Oh!" said the old lady, with a shade of satire, "does she? That's very
good-natured of Fanny Williams."
"Let me read you what she says." Electra bent a frowning brow upon the
page. "Ah, this is it. 'It was to be expected that your grandmother
would write what we all wanted to read. But her "Recollections" are more
than welcome. They are satisfying. They are illuminative.'"
"Fanny Williams is a fool!"
Electra, not glancing up, yet managed to look deeply pained.
"She goes on to say, 'What a power your dear grandmother has been! I
never realized it until now.'"
"That's a nasty thing for Fanny Williams to write. You tell her so."
"Then she asks whether you would be willing to meet the Delta Club for
an afternoon of it."
"Of what?"
"Your book, grandmother,--your 'Recollections.'"
"Electra, you drive me to drink. I have written the book. I've printed
it. I've done with it. What does Fanny Williams want me to do now?
Prance?"
Electra was looking at her grandmother at last and in a patient
hopefulness, like one awaiting a better mood.
"Grandmother dear," she protested, "it almost seems as if you owe it to
the world, having said so much, to say a little more."
"What, for instance, Electra? What?"
Electra considered, one hand smoothing out the page.
"People want to know things about it. The newspapers do. How can you