try not to think what they are. I dare say I don't know all of them. But there are words."

"It would make me solid with the prince. He would get several concessions from his brother. They would be slight, but they would mean a great deal to the Brotherhood."

"I see. You would pull a wire or two in Germany. In Russia, too, perhaps? You think you would disarm suspicion, if the prince stood by you. Maybe you' 'd get into Russia, even. Is that it? It would be dramatic to get into Russia after you'd been warned."

She was following his mind along, as she often did, creeping with doubtful steps where he had taken wing. "But still!" She looked at him, smiling rather wistfully. "Still, you would n't throw me to the wolves for that, would you?" He met her look with one as candid, and little as she believed in the accompanying smile, she felt her heart warmed by it. Now he was gazing about him at the summer prospect.

"I am delighted to find you here," he volunteered. "It's a change. It will do you good-do us both good."

"Are you quite well?" She hesitated slightly in asking that, but he turned upon her as if the words had given him a shock of terror or dismay. In her surprise she even fancied he paled a little. "What makes you ask that ?" he cried. "What do you mean by it?"

"Why, I don't know! You look well, but not quite yourself, perhaps, — somehow different."

MacLeod took off his hat and wiped his forehead beaded with a moisture come on it, he knew, at that moment.

"I should like to ask," he said peevishly, "what in the devil you mean. Have you heard anything?"

"No," said Rose, entirely amazed. "What is there to hear?"

They had reached the station, and she led him to the bench under a tree where lovers and their lasses assembled at dusk to see the train come in. She sat down,

dispirited and still wondering, and he stood before her, all strength, now, and candor, as if he had thrown off his dubious mood and resolved to be himself.

"About the prince," he was saying. "I want you to think of him. He would give you experiences such as I never could. You'd live on velvet. You'd have art, music, a thousand things. He likes your voice. He'd insist on fostering that. You would meet men of rank, men of note

She interrupted him.

"Men of rank! I've no doubt of it. How about their wives ?"

He shook his head. A look of what seemed noble pain was on his face, impatience at the shallowness of things.

"Rose," he said, "you know how little I respect society as it is. Take out of it what good you can, the play of emotion, the charm, the inspiration. Don't undervalue the structure, my dear. Live, in spite of it."

She looked at him wearily and thought how handsome he was, and that these were platitudes. Then his train came, and he left her with a benedictory grace, standing on the step hat in hand, majestic in his courtesy. But as she watched him, suddenly, an instant before the train was starting she saw him yield and sway. He leaned upon the rail with both hands and then, as if by a quick decision, stepped to the platform again. She hurried to him, and found him with an unfamiliar look on his face. It might have been dread anticipation; it was surely pain.

"What is it?" she asked him. "Tell

me."

He did not answer, but involuntarily he stretched out his hand to her.

"Rub it," he said. "Hold it tight. Infernal! oh, infernal!"

As she rubbed the hand he suddenly recovered his old manner. The color came back to his face, and he breathed in a deep relief.

"That's over," he said, almost reck

lessly, she thought. "Queer how quick it goes!"

"What is it?" She was trembling. It seemed to her that they had each passed through some mysterious crisis.

"Is there another train to town?" he was asking an official, who had kept a curious eye on him. There would be in three minutes, an accommodation crawling after the express he had lost.

"Good-by again," he called to Rose, with a weaker transcript of his usual manner. "I'm to be down in a few days, you know. Good-by."

This time he walked into the car, and she saw him take his seat and lie back against the window-casing. But he recovered himself and smiled, when his eyes met hers. If anything was the matter, she was evidently not to know.

XIV

As the two had walked away, Peter turned to Electra, stammering forth,"Isn't he a great old boy?"

He was tremendous, she owned, in language better chosen; and this new community of feeling was restful to her.

"Come out into the garden," he said, and as they went along the path to the grape arbor, he took her hand and she left it to him. They seemed restored to close relations, as if MacLeod had wrought some spell upon them. By the time they reached the liquid greenness of the arbor light, Peter was sure he loved her. He could turn to her quite passionately.

"Electra," he said, holding both her hands now, "I've missed you all these days."

She smiled a little and that, with her glowing color, made her splendid.

"You have been here every day," she said, conceding him the grace of having done his utmost.

"Yes, but it has n't been right. There's been something between us - something unexplained."

She knew, so she reflected, what that

She withdrew from him and sat down, indicating the other chair.

"Something very queer has happened," she said. "I must tell you about it." It had just come to her again as it had been doing at moments through the absorbing hour at luncheon, that she was in a difficult place with grandmother, and that here was the one creature whom

she had the right to count upon. Rapidly she told him the facts of the case, ending with her conclusion,

"The house belongs to grandmother." Peter was frowning comically. In his effort to think, he looked as if the sun were in his eyes.

"I don't believe I understand," he said, and again she told him.

"You don't mean you are building all this on a casual sentence in a book?" He frowned the harder.

Electra was breathing pleasure at the beauty of the case.

"It is not a casual sentence," she insisted. "It's an extract from a letter."

Peter had no intimate acquaintance with the business of the world, but he knew its elements. He regarded her with tenderness, as a woman attractively ignorant of harsh details.

"But Electra, dear, that is n't legal. It does n't have the slightest bearing on what you should give or what she could exact from you - if she were that kind." "No," she said, "it is n't legal. But it is ethical." She used the large word with a sense of safety, loving the sound of it and conscious that Peter would not choke her off.

"But it is n't that. You don't know how your grandfather wrote that letter.

He have done it in a fit of temper, may or malice, or carelessness, or a dozen things, and forgotten it next day. A letter's the idlest thing on earth. There's no reason for your considering it a minute."

"I am bound to consider it." said Electra. "There it is, in black and white. I shall make over the place to grandmother."

'Well!" Peter felt like whistling, and then unpursed his lips because, according to Electra, whistling was not polite. He had no restrictions relative to her giving away her property, but he felt very seriously that she must not be allowed to indulge herself in any form of insanity, however picturesque. A detail occurred to him, and he said quickly, with a look at her,

"But Electra, you and Tom inherited this place together."

She knew what was coming and her color deepened. Again Rose had stepped between them, and Electra felt herself back in their old atmosphere of constraint.

"I have inherited it from Tom," she rejoined.

"You ignore his wife?"

"You believe him. You would not believe me?"

She hedged a little here. "You gave me no proof - only the woman's word." "Would you believe him without proof?"

She was silent, yet she knew she must. "But," she said, with the haste of finishing an unwelcome subject, “I shall settle the matter as soon as possible after he comes back. If he tells me his daughter was married to my brother, she shall be paid every cent she is entitled to. But she shall not share this house inch of it."

"Why not?"

not an

Electra seemed to be carried on by a wave. Hurt pride found its voice, all the revulsion she had felt in these days of Peter's divided allegiance.

"The house is ours. It belongs to the family. I shall make it over to grandmother, but not to that girl. She shall never own a timber in it."

Peter spoke involuntarily, with an unpremeditated wonder:

"What makes you hate her so?"

Tears came slowly into Electra's eyes. They surprised her as much as they did him. She was not used to crying, and she held them from falling, with a proud restraint. Electra felt very lonely at that moment in a world which would not understand. She was upholding truth and

personal motives. She had proposed a picturesque sacrifice for the sake of ab

"Did n't you believe that, Electra ? Not even that ?"

"I am forced to believe it now. When he comes back, I shall ask him to corroborate her story. If he does - I shall be obliged to give her what is just.”

"Not otherwise, Electra? You believe him."

"I believe him implicitly." Her tone rang out in an astonishing assurance. She might have been pledging fealty to some adored intimate.

conscious that the act ought to look rather beautiful. Yet Peter saw no beauty in it, and grandmother had called her a fool. Peter, seeing the tears, was enormously embarrassed by them. He could only kiss her hand in great humility. He, on his part, put justice cheerfully aside.

"How could I?" he murmured, with the contrition of the male who has learned that tears are to be staunched

without delay. "How could I?" But Electra, on her feet, had drawn her hand away from him. She felt only haste,

haste to conclude her abnegation, perhaps even to forestall any question of the house by getting the matter out of her hands before MacLeod came back and she had to reckon with his testimony.

"I am not crying," she said proudly. "I must go and talk to grandmother. Promise me this. Don't tell her -" she hesitated.

"Rose?"

"Don't tell her I have spoken of this." She had gone, and Peter helplessly watched her walking up the path. Then he took his own way home. "My stars!" he muttered from time to time. His chief desire at the moment was to escape from anything so strenuous as Electra's moral life. It made a general and warm-hearted obliquity the only possible condition of conduct in a pretty world. Peter looked round at it admiringly then, as the shadow of Electra's earnestness withdrew into the distance. It was such a darling world, there were such dear shadows and beguiling lights and all things adorable to paint. He cast off the mood that teased him, and walking faster, began to whistle. It seemed to him that there were so many agreeable deeds to do, and so much time to do them in, that he must simply bestir himself to use half the richness of things. But when he got into the garden, the honeysuckle smelled so sweet that he sat down at its foot and breathed it until he went to sleep.

Electra walked into the library, where Madam Fulton sat at her tatting and Billy Stark read aloud to her from an idle book. Electra felt that she could not possibly delay. All her affairs must be settled at once and the ends knit up. "I beg your pardon," she said. "Grandmother, may I speak to you a moment?"

Madam Fulton laid down her work. "Is it the same old story?" she inquired.

nonsense. If we talk about it any more, we shall be insane together. Don't go, Billy."

"I should like to put it before Mr. Stark," said Electra, with her clear gaze upon him, as if she summoned him to some exalted testimony.

Billy stirred uneasily in his chair. He had confided to Florrie the night before that Electra's hypothetical cases made him as nervous as the devil. Madam Fulton cast him a comical look. It had begun to occur to her that a ball, once rolling, is difficult to stop.

"Go ahead then," she agreed. "I wash my hands of it. Billy, keep a tight grip on yourself. You'll die a-laughing."

Then Electra stated her case; but Billy did not laugh. Like Peter, he looked at her frowningly, and owned he did not understand. Electra stated it again, and this time he repeated the proposition after her. Madam Fulton sat in a composed aloofness and made no comment.

"But, my dear young lady," said Billy Stark, "you quite misunderstand. An extract from a letter has no legal value compared with a document signed and sealed in proper form."

"I know," said Electra, "not legal, but She was aware that Madam Fulton's eye was upon her and she dared not finish. "It was at least my grandfather's expressed wish," she concluded firmly. "I shall carry it out."

"Electra," said the old lady kindly, "I can't listen to you. It's all fudge and

VOL. 101 NO. 1

ened at this "but it's fantastic."

She spoke decisively. "It is the thing to do."

Now Madam Fulton entered the field. She looked from one to the other, at Electra with commiseration, at Billy in a community of regret over that young intellect so dethroned.

"Now you see what I told you," she warned them. "Here we are, all crazy together. We've let you say it, and we've addled our own brains listening to it for a minute. I'll tell you what, Electra!' She had discovered. "If you're so anxious to get rid of the place, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll buy it."

"Buy it, grandmother? what belongs to you already?"

"Don't say that again. It gives me a ringing in my ears. That's what I'll do. You're going to marry Peter Grant and go abroad. I'll take the place off your hands. I've always wanted it. I've made a shocking sum out of my book, shocking. I can well afford it. There's an offer for you!"

Electra shook her head.

"I could n't," she said gently. "How could I sell you what is yours already? The letter

"The letter!" repeated the old lady, as if it were an imprecation. She looked at Billy. He returned the glance with a despairing immobility. She reflected She reflected that the case must be worse even than she had thought, since Billy had not smiled. Electra must be madder than she had imagined, and her own culpability was the greater for weaving such a coil. "Shall I tell her, Billy?" she asked faintly.

He nodded.

"I should," he said commiseratingly, and got up to leave the room. It seemed to Billy this summer that he was constantly trying to escape situations with a delicacy which was more than half cowardice, only to be dragged back into the arena. The mandate he had expected promptly came.

"Don't go, Billy," cried the old lady. "Sit down." Madam Fulton continued, in a hesitating humility Electra had never seen in her, "Electra, I don't be

The boot was on the other foot. All the values of the scene had shifted. Now it was Electra who doubted the general sanity. Electra was smiling at her.

"No, grandmother," she was saying, with a pretty air of chiding, "you must n't talk that way. You think that convinces me. It's very dear of you, very dear and generous. But I know why you do it."

"Bless my sinful soul!" ejaculated the old lady. "Oh - you tell her, Billy."

Billy shook his head. He was not going to be dragged as far as that. He was sorry for her, but she had had her whistle and she must pay for it. The old lady was beginning again in a weak voice,

"You see, Electra, that book is n't what you think. It is n't what anybody thinks. I-I made it up."

Electra was about to speak, but her grandmother forestalled her.

"Don't you go and offer me wine. You get it into your head once and for all that I'm telling you a fact and that you've got to believe it. I made up my book of recollections. They're not true, not one of them. As I remember, there is n't one. The letters I wrote myself."

Electra was staring at her in a neutrality which was not even wonder. Finally she spoke; her awed voice trembled.

"The Brook Farm letters!"

Perhaps it was this reverent hesitation which restored Madam Fulton to something of her wonted state.

"For heaven's sake, Electra," she fulminated, "what is there so sacred about Brook Farm? If anybody is going to make up letters from anywhere, why should n't it be from there?"

Electra was looking at Billy Stark as if she bade him save her from these shocks or tell her the whole world was rocking.