nt." 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.

"Grandmother!" she said.

"Well!"

"You spoke of Mr. Stark--"

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."

XI

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.

"It's all right, Peter," she said absently. "It had to be."

But still he saw no reason for her blight and pain. It was not merely
incredible, it was impossible that any one should shrink because Markham
MacLeod was