"He is dead," she said, with the utmost quietude.
Rose leaned forward and gazed still in her face. She was well convinced that this look was real: a look of hopeless grief, though the words were so fantastic.
"Electra," she said gently, and even put out a hand and touched her on the arm. "Electra! What is it?"
"I have told you," said Electra, "he is dead. We found him in the ferns, Peter and I. He is at my house. We thought you ought to know it."
"Come!" said Rose. She seized her hand, and Electra pulled it away again, quietly, and yet as if it had no business in that hasty grasp. "Let me go home with you."
"If you wish," said Electra. "I suppose you have a right to be there. They may want you." And in silence they hurried down the path together and out into the road. At Electra's own gate, she turned to Rose.
"Electra, he has not died. No one has died." Rose spoke gently, knowing that in some way the other woman had been shocked and her reason shaken. "Come into the house and we'll find Peter."
But at the moment Peter and the doctor appeared together in the doorway, and the doctor turned to give orders to a servant in the hall. Peter saw them and came quickly down to them. It was apparent to Rose that something had happened.
"Tell her, Peter," said Electra, in some impatience. "She won't believe me. Tell her he is dead."
Peter and Rose stood looking at each other, she questioning and he in sad assent. Then there crept upon her face a look that was the companion to Electra's. The color faded, her eyes widened.
"My father?" she breathed, and Peter nodded.
"Yes," said Electra, as if she were astonished at them both and their dull wits, "Markham MacLeod is dead."
That evening grannie was in her own room, and Peter and Rose, below, talked intermittently of that strange morning.
"It is incredible, Peter, isn't it," she began, "for him to die like this?"
"I expected violence," he said. "We all expected it."
"Isn't it strange, too, that I can't feel grief! I'm neither glad nor sorry. I feel very still."
"The whole world will feel grief," said Peter loyally.
"Yes, but to me--Peter, it is just as if he were not a man, not something I had loved, but a thing that was great to look at and had no soul. It was like a tree falling, or a huge rock undermined. Don't you see? As if it were the natural thing, and there was no other way possible."