"Did you see them married?"
"No, no, heavens, no! Why, I didn't come on Tom in Paris until his
illness. Tom never had any use for me. You know that. Meantime he'd been
there a couple of years, into the mire and out again, and he'd had time
to be married to Rose, and she'd had time to leave him."
"Ah, she left him! Why?"
"Why did you leave him, Electra, before he went over there? Why did you
give up living in town, and simply retreat down here? You couldn't stand
it. Nobody could. Tom was a bad egg, Electra. I don't need to tell you
that."
"It is certainly painful for me to hear it."
"But why, why, Electra? I can't stultify myself to prove this poor girl
an adventuress. I can't canonize Tom Fulton, not even if you ask me."
"There are things we need not recur to. My brother is dead," said
Electra, with dignity.
"Yes. That's precisely why I am asking you to provide for his widow."
"Suppose, then, this were true. Suppose she is what you say,--don't you
feel she forfeited anything by leaving him?"
"Ah, but she went back, poor girl! She went back to him when he was
pretty well spent with sickness and sheer fright. Tom didn't die like a
hero, Electra. Get that out of your mind."
She put up both hands in an unconsidered protest.
"Oh, what is the use!" she cried; and his heart smote him.
"None at all," he answered. "But I mean to show you that this girl
didn't walk back to any dead easy job when she undertook Tom."
"Why did she do it?"
"Why? From humanity, justice, honor, I suppose, the things that
influence women when they stick to their bad bargains."
"Where had she been meantime?"
"With her father, in lodgings. That was where I met her."
"Was she known by my brother's name?"
"No," he hesitated, "not then. I knew her as Miss MacLeod."
"Ah!"
"I can see why," Peter declared, with an eager emphasis. "I never
thought of it before, but can't you see? I should think a woman could,
at least. The whole situation was probably so distasteful to her that
she threw off even his name."
"And assumed it after his death!"
"No! no! She was called Madame Fulton at his apartment. I distinctly
remember that."
They had been immovably facing each other, but now Electra turned away
and walked back to the library table, where she stood resting one hand
and waiting, pale and tired, yet unchanged. This seemed to her one of
the times that try men's souls, but wherein a New England conscience
must abide by its traditions.
"How long does she propose remaining?" she asked, out of her desire to
put some limit to the distasteful situation, though she had forbidden
herself to enter it with even that human interest.
"Why, as long as we ask her to stay,--you, or, if she is not to expect
anything from you, I. She has nothing of her own, poor girl."
"Has her father repudiated her? That ought to tell something."
Peter was silent for a moment. Then he said in an engaging honesty,
bound as it was to hurt his own cause,--
"I don't know. I don't understand their relation altogether. Rose gives
no opinions, but I fancy she is not in sympathy with him."
"Yes, I fancied so."
"But we mustn't fancy so. We mustn't get up an atmosphere and look
through it till we see distorted facts."
"Those are what I want, Peter, facts. If Miss MacLeod--"
"Do you mean you won't even give her your brother's name?"
"Even, Peter! What could be more decisive?"
"Do you expect me to introduce her as Miss MacLeod? Do you expect me to
call her so?"
"I fancied you called her Rose."
"I did. I do. I began it in those unspeakable days when Tom went out of
his head with fright and fever and we held him down in bed. Electra!"
She was listening.
"Was that grandmother calling?" she asked, though grandmother never yet
had summoned her for companionship or service. But Electra felt her high
decorum failing her. She was tired with the impact of emotion, and it
was a part of her creed never to confess to weakness. She had snatched
at the slight subterfuge as if it were a sustaining draught. "I am
afraid I must go."
"Electra!" He placed himself before her with outstretched hands. Very
simple emotions were talking in him. They told him that this was the
second day of his return, that he was her lover, and he had not kissed
her. And they told him also, to his sheer fright and bewilderment, that
he did not want to kiss her. All he could ineffectually do was to
reiterate, "We can't go on like this. Nothing in the world is worth it."
Yet while he said it, he knew there was one thing at least infinitely
worth while: to right the wrongs of a beautiful and misjudged lady. Only
it was necessary, apparently, for the present, to keep the lady out of
the question.
Electra was listening.
"It is grandmother," she said recklessly. "I must go."
There was a rustle up the staircase, and he was alone in the library, to
take himself home as he might.