When Peter went up the steps of his grandmother's house, he found Mrs.
Grant still on the veranda, and Rose beside her. The girl looked at him
eagerly, as if she besought him for whatever message he had, and he
answered the glance with one warmed by implied sympathy. Until he saw
her, he had not realized that anger made any part in the emotion roused
in him by his imperial lady. Now he remembered how this gracious young
creature seemed to him, so innocent, so sad. He felt a rising in his
throat, as he thought of subjecting her to unfriendly judgment. Rose, in
spite of the serious cast of her face and the repose of her figure, wore
an ineffable air of youth. She had splendid shoulders and a yielding
waist, and her fine hands lay like a separate beauty in the lap of her
black dress. She had the profile of a coin touched with finer human
graces, a fullness of the upper lip, a slight waving of the soft
chestnut hair over the low forehead, and lashes too dark for harmony
with the gray eyes. There were defects in her flawlessness. Her mouth
was large, in spite of its pout, and on her nose were a few beguiling
freckles. At that moment, in her wayward beauty, lighted by the kindled
eye of expectation, she seemed to Peter to be made up of every
creature's best. His grandmother smiled at him out of her warm
placidity, and though Rose still drew his eyes to her, he was aware that
she did not mean to question him.
"Electra has to go in town," he volunteered. "She won't be back. Perhaps
not to-night."
"You must stay here with us, my dear," said Mrs. Grant. "Peter, have her
trunks moved into the west chamber."
Still the girl's eyes seemed to interrogate him, and Peter sat down in a
chair and twined his long fingers in and out. He felt the drop in
temperature ready to chill the voyager who, after the lonely splendor of
the sea, returns to the earth as civil life has made it.
"We must remember she hadn't heard of you," he assured Rose
blunderingly, out of his depression.
"No. He had not written." She made the statement rather as that of a
fact they shared together, and he nodded. "I am afraid it is unwelcome
to her, the idea of me."
"She doesn't know you," he assured her, in the same bungling apology. He
expected her to betray some wound to her pride, but she only looked
humble and a little crushed.
Grannie had apparently not heard, and she said now, with her lovely
gentleness,--
"Don't you want to go upstairs, my dear, and be by yourself a little
while? You have been traveling so far. We have noon dinner, you know.
That will seem funny to you. Mary is getting it, but Peter will show you
a room."
Peter found her bag in the wide hall, darkened from the sun, and went
with her up the stairs. At the head she paused and beckoned him to the
window-seat over the front door.
"Set it down there," she said rapidly, touching the bag with a finger.
"Tell me--how did she receive it?"
"What?"
"You know. The news of me."
"She was surprised."
"Naturally. But what else? She was shocked!"
"It was a shock, of course. In its suddenness, you know. You'd expect
that."
She sank down in the window-seat and clasped her hands upon her knees,
looking at them thoughtfully. Her brows were drawn together.
"Yes," she said, "yes. It was a shock. I see that. Well!" She looked up
at him in a challenging directness before which he winced, conscious of
the little he had to meet it with. "When am I to see her?"
"I am not sure when she is to be back."
"Ah! She won't come to me. Very well. I shall go to her." She laid her
hand upon the bag, and rose, as if the interview were ended. Peter
carried the bag in at the open door of her room, and after he had set it
down, looked vaguely about him, as if arrangements might be bettered in
the still, sweet place. She was smiling at him with an irradiating
warmth.
"You're sorry, aren't you?" she said, from a comprehension that seemed a
proffer of vague sympathy. "It makes you feel inhospitable. You needn't.
You're a dear. Your grandmother is lovely--lovely."
Her praise seemed to Peter such a precious fruitage that the only thing,
in delicacy, was to turn away and take it with him to enjoy. But she was
calling him.
"Peter!"
He found her flushed and eagerly expectant, it seemed to him, as if his
news had been uplifting to her. She looked at him, at the room, and
rapidly from the window where the treetops trembled, all in one
comprehensive sweep.
"Peter," she said, with conviction, "it's simply lovely here."
"It's a nice old place," responded Peter. He loved it from long use, but
he was aware of its comfortable plainness.
"I never saw anything so dear. Those square worn tiles down by the front
door, the fireplace, the curtains,--look, Peter, it's dotted muslin."
She touched a moving fold, and Peter laughed outright.
"I like it," he said, "but there's nothing particular about it. If you
want style, why, you'll have to look back at what you've left. When it
comes to that, what's the matter with a chateau?"
"Yes, yes." She put the chateau aside with one of her light movements of
the hands. "But here I feel as if I'd come home to something. You see
it's so safe here, Peter. It's so darling, too, so intimate. I can't
tell what I mean. If Electra would only like me--O Peter, I could be
almost happy, as happy as the day is long!" As she said the old phrase,
it seemed to her to fit into the scene. She looked not merely as if
happiness awaited her, but as if she could almost put her eager finger
on it. And there was Electra, not so many rods away, drawbridge up and
portcullis down, inquiring, "Is she a grisette?" Afterwards it seemed to
Peter as if his sympathy for the distressed lady went to his head a
little, for he lifted her hand and kissed it. But he did not speak, save
to himself, going down the stairs:--
"It's a damned shame!"