"I simply couldn't write it, because I knew I should be home so soon. It was about his wife. He begged you to be kind to her."
"He was married, Electra, to a very beautiful girl. I have brought her home with me."
Electra was upon her feet. Her face had lost its cold sweet pallor. The scarlet of hot blood was upon it, a swift response to what seemed outrage at his hands.
"I have never--" she gasped. "It is not true."
Peter, too, had risen. He was looking at her rather wistfully. His imperial lady had, in that instant, lost her untouched calm. She was breathing ire.
"Ah, don't say that," he pleaded. "You never saw her."
"I can't help it. I feel it. She is an adventuress."
"What did he say to you? What did Tom say?"
"He pointed to her as she stood by the window, her back to us--it was the day before he died--and said, 'Tell them to be good to her.'"
"You see! You don't even know whether he meant it as a message to me or some of his associates. He didn't say she was his wife?"
He answered calmly and rather gravely, but the green world outside the arbor looked unsteady to him. Electra was one of the fixed ideas of his life; her nobility, her reserve, her strength had seemed to set her far above him. Now she sounded like the devil's advocate. She was gazing at him keenly.
"Her story made a great impression on you," she threw out incidentally.
The effort was apparent, but Peter accepted it.
"Yes," he answered simply. "She makes a great impression on everybody. She will on you."
"What evidence have you brought me? Did you see them married?"
"No," said Peter, with the same unmoved courtesy.
"You see! Have you even found any record of their marriage?"
"You have the girl's word. She has come over here with you. What for?"
Peter lifted a hand to his forehead. He answered gently as a man sometimes does, of set purpose, to avoid falling into a passion.
"It was the natural thing, Electra. She has no home, poor child!--nor money, except what Tom left in his purse. He'd been losing pretty heavily just before. I say, it seemed the natural thing to come to you. Half this place was his. His wife belongs here." The last argument sounded to him unpardonably crude, as to an imperial lady, but he ventured it. Then he looked at her. With his artist's premonition, he looked to see her brows drawn, her teeth perhaps set angrily upon a quivering lip. But Electra was again pale. Her face was marble to him, to everything.