e other girl.

"Here!" Peter was answering. "To America! He writes me the most stirring
letter. I didn't think I knew him so well. He has so many friends here,
he says, friends he never saw. He wants to meet them. The best of it is,
he's coming here--to us."

"Here!" repeated Rose again. She seemed to be sinking into herself, but
the tense hand upon the cabinet kept her firm.

Peter looked at her with eyes of innocent delight.

"Here, to us. I told him if he ever came over, we should grab him before
anybody got a hand on him. I've told grannie. She's delighted."

"You told him that!" Her voice held a reproach so piercing that they
were all staring at her in wonder. She looked like a woman suffering
some anguish too fierce, for the moment, to be stilled. "You've been
writing him!"

"Of course," said Peter. "Why, of course, I wrote him. I sent him word
when we first got here, to tell him you were well."

"How could you! Oh, how could you!"

At her tone, the inexplicable reproach of it, he lost his gay assurance.
Peter forgot the others. There was nobody in the room, to his eager
consciousness, but Rose and his erring self; for somehow, most
innocently, he had offended her. He took a step toward her, his boyish
face all melted into contrition. There might have been tears in his
eyes, they were so soft.

"Sit down," he implored her. "Rose! What have I done?"

It was like a sorry child asking pardon. Electra gave him a quick look,
and then went on watching. At the tone Rose also was recalled. She shook
herself a little, as if she threw off dreams. Her hand upon the cabinet
relaxed. Her face softened, the pose of her body yielded, She seemed
almost, by some power of the will, to bring new color into her cheeks.
Peter had drawn forward her chair, and she took it smilingly.

"I'm not accustomed to long-lost fathers appearing unannounced," she
said whimsically. "Dear me! What if he brings me a Paris gown!"

But Peter was standing before her, still with an air of deep solicitude.

"It was a shock, wasn't it?" he kept repeating. "What a duffer I am!"

"It was a shock," said Electra, with an incisive confirmation. "Mayn't I
get you something? A glass of wine?"

Rose looked at her quite pleasantly before Peter had time to begin his
persuasive recommendation that she should spare herself.

"Let me take you home," he was urging.

It was as if Rose had been drawing draughts from some deep reservoir,
and now she had