Rose MacLeod

								

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