ra. "He has not been here, but I will send for
him. He shall come to luncheon. You must stay."

"Shall I?" He was all good-nature, all readiness and adaptability.
Electra excused herself to give the maid an order, and while she stood
in the hall, talking to the woman, temptation came upon her. Yet it was
not temptation, she told herself. This was the obvious thing to do.

"Tell Mr. Grant I wish him particularly to come to luncheon," she said,
"and to bring"--she hesitated at the name and shirked it, "and to bring
the young lady,--the lady who is staying there."

Then she returned to MacLeod. But she was not altogether at ease.
Electra was accustomed to examine her motives, and she had the
disquieting certainty that, this time, though they would do for the
literal eye, they had not been entirely pure. Still, was it her fault if
Rose, confronted by the newcomer, proved unprepared and showed what was
fragile in her testimony? But she was not to be thrown off the scent of
public affairs.

"Talk about Russia," she entreated. She had never felt so spontaneously
at ease with any one.

MacLeod was used to making that impression, and he smiled on her the
more kindly, seeing how the old charm worked.

"I'd rather talk about America," he said, "about this place of yours.
It's a bully place."

Electra was devoted to academic language, and to her certainty that all
great souls expressed themselves in it. She winced a little but
recovered herself when he asked with a new conversational seriousness,
"and how is my friend Grant?"

"Well." She found some difficulty in answering more fully, because it
somehow became apparent to her that he had not really placed her. Peter
was his only clue in the town. It hardly looked as if he expected to
find a daughter here.

"Is he painting?" MacLeod went on.

Electra frowned a little. Peter was doing nothing but idling, she
suspected, up to yesterday, and then, driving past, she had caught a
glimpse of him in the garden before a canvas and of Rose lying before
him in her long chair. That had given her a keener, a more bitter
curiosity than she was prepared for in herself. She had shrunk back a
little from it, timid before the suspicion that she might like Peter
more tempestuously and unreasonably than was consonant with
self-mastery. But while these thoughts ran through her head she gazed at
MacLeod with her clear eyes and answered,--

"I fancy he looks upon this as his vacation. He mu