Then Electra spoke, turning away, as if the smouldering satisfaction of her tone must not betray itself in her face.
"She is terrified at his coming--Markham MacLeod's."
"Well, you don't know Markham MacLeod. Perhaps if you did, you'd be terrified yourself."
"But his daughter, grandmother, a girl who calls herself his daughter!"
"Don't you believe that either?" she inquired. "Don't you believe she is his daughter?"
"Not for a moment." Electra had turned and was walking toward the door, all her white draperies contributing to the purity of her aspect.
Madam Fulton continued, in the same inadequacy of amaze,--
"But Peter knows it. He knew them together."
"Peter knew her with Tom," said Electra conclusively. "One proof is worth as much as the other."
At the door she turned, almost a beseeching look upon her face, as she remembered another shock that had been dealt her.
The old lady's thought went traveling back. Then her face lighted.
"Oh," she said. "Yes, I know. I'm engaged to Billy."
"Grandmother--" Electra blushed a little, painfully--"You can't mean--grandmother, are you going to marry him?"
Madam Fulton laid her head back upon the small silk pillow of her chair. She never owned to it, but sometimes the dull hour after luncheon brought with it a drowsiness she was ceasing to combat. She smiled at Electra, who seemed very far away from her through the veil of that approaching slumber and through the years that separated them.
"We shan't marry at once, Electra," she said, dropping off while the girl looked at her. "Not at once. I expect to have a good many little affairs before I settle down."
On the way back to the house, Peter kept looking solicitously at Rose, breaking now and then into quick regrets.
"What have I done?" he asked her, in his impetuous stammer. "Shouldn't I have written to your father? Rose, what have I done?"
She seemed not to hear him. Her face had a strained expression, the old look he remembered from the days of Tom's illness and her not quite natural grief. Then she had never given way to the irrepressible warmth of sorrow, like a loving wife. She had seemed to harden herself, and that he accounted for by his knowledge of Tom's hideous past. The woman had known him, Peter reflected, from illuminating intercourse, and his death meant chiefly the turning of a blotted page. But now! over her bloom of youth was the same shadowing veil. She was not so much a woman moved by strong emotion as made desperate through hidden causes. Still he besought her to forgive him, finally to look at him. Then she wakened.