"That would be very sweet of you, grandmother," said Electra, innocent of hidden meanings. "Then we might count on two afternoons."
"What do you want to know about my father?" asked Rose, and Electra answered with a contrasting enthusiasm,--
"His habit of thought, something about his daily life as seen by those nearest him, anything to interpret a great man to us."
"I can't do it." Rose had answered with a touch of harshness strangely contrasted with her facile ways. "I really can't."
Now she saw why she had been summoned, and her gratitude sobered into dull distaste. She felt cold.
"That sort of thing is very difficult," said Stark, in a general desire to quell the emotional tide. "I often think a person next us has to be inarticulate about us. He doesn't know really what he thinks of us till we are gone. You know a big Frenchman says it is like being inside the works of a clock. You can't tell the time there. You have to go outside."
Rose was upon her feet, a lovely figure, wistful and mysteriously sad.
"I must go back," she said. "Thank you for letting me come." She had turned away when Madam Fulton called to her.
"Miss MacLeod!" Rose stood, arrested. Madam Fulton continued, "Why not stay to luncheon with us?"
The girl did not answer. Apparently she could not. Tears were swimming in her eyes. She looked at Electra in what might be reproach or a despair at the futility of the fight she had to make. She returned to Madam Fulton and stood before her.
"You didn't know," she said, in a low tone. "No one has told you!"
"Sit down," said the old lady kindly. "What is it?"
Rose stood before her, proudly now, her back turned upon Electra, as if she repudiated one source of justice and appealed to another court.
"You called me Miss MacLeod," she said, in her full-throated voice. "I was your grandson's wife."
"Tom's wife!" cried the old lady, in a sharp staccato. "Tom's wife! For heaven's sake!"
Rose turned from her to Stark with an eloquent insistence. Electra, outside the circle of the drama, stood ignored. But Madam Fulton called to her,--
"I have heard it," answered Electra, with composure.
"You have heard it? Why didn't you tell me?"
But Electra made no reply. Madam Fulton gave way to her excitement. It seemed to put new blood into her veins.