Rose MacLeod

								

large. Life, surprised life, poured in on her, and she had gained her
feet with a spring. Before Electra could insist upon her own decorous
distance, Rose, with a charming gesture and an insistent cordiality, had
her by both hands.
"How good of you," she was saying. "How good of you!"
"Not at all," returned Electra, with a stiff dignity she hated, as not
in the least the armor she had meant to wear. "I came to see if you
would drive over to the house." This she had not meant to ask, but it
seemed easier to deal with problematic characters in the course of
motion than face to face and standing. Rose was eagerly ready.
"My hat is here," she cried, "and my parasol. I thought I might walk up
the road a bit,--but it was so hot. How good of you!"
As they went down the path together, Rose in her slender grace and eager
motions the significant note in the garden, Electra felt the irritation
of having, for any reason, committed herself to even a short intimacy
with her. But presently they were together in the carriage, and Electra
spoke.
"My grandmother is at home this morning. We have a guest for a few days,
Mr. William Stark, of London. I thought you might be interested in
meeting them both."
"I shall be delighted," returned Rose, still in that warmly impulsive
tone.
Electra had a strong distaste for unconsidered things. They seemed to
her to show lack of poise. Now she was conscious of the inconsistency of
proposing that Rose should meet anybody, even Billy Stark. But in the
moment of conceiving it she had remembered that Mr. Stark was a man of
the world; he would know an adventuress when he saw one. Afterwards she
would ask him frankly how his judgment had been affected by the siren's
song.
At the house she led the way into the vine-shaded sitting-room where
Madam Fulton and Stark had been engaged for an hour in a battle
delightful to them both. Madam Fulton sat beautifully upright in a
straight-backed chair, and her old friend, with her permission, lay upon
a bamboo couch, where he held his eyeglass by its ribbon in one
outstretched hand and gesticulated with it, while he urged torrentially
upon her the rights of a publisher to the confidence of his author. Now
he came to his feet and stood punctiliously.
"Ah!" said Madam Fulton. She had remembered a little lack in her
reception of Rose when, hot and tired from her journey, she had found
her in the house. "So here is our young lady again. I have been
wondering why we haven't seen you, my dear."
While Rose, in her grateful sweetness, was bowing over her hand, Electra
had said to the gentleman, with the air of its being quite the usual
thing to say,--
"You know all about Markham MacLeod, Mr. Stark. This is the daughter of
Markham MacLeod."
Somehow, save to Rose, it seemed an adequate presentation, and that
instant Stark was bowing before her.
"I can't say Mr. MacLeod," Electra added, with the elaborate grace that