urging him, because it seemed to her, too, a doubtful
pleasure, if it must be shared.
"Not to-day, then. But I shall see you again."
"Before you go."
Her face called upon him like a messenger beseeching news.
"Many, many times," he told her smilingly. "Many times, even if they
have to be within a few days. Now, good-by."
She watched him down the walk, and as if he knew that, he turned, as the
shrubbery was closing about him, and waved his hat to her. That seemed
another bit of prescience,--to know she was to be there. Electra was
very happy. She sat down again in a swoon of the reason and a mad hurry
of what cried to her as the higher part of her nature, unrecognized
until now, and thought of her exalted fortune.
MacLeod found Rose ready to question him. She was at the gate, to have
her word immediately. He noted the signs of apprehension in her face,
and, taking her hand, swung it as they walked.
"Has anything happened?" she asked irrepressibly.
"I've been down to--what do they call it?--the plantation."
"What did you talk about?"
"Oh, crops!"
"You don't know anything about crops!"
MacLeod laughed.
"Well, the other man did. I can always listen."
"Have you been there all the time?"
"No. I went in to see Electra."
Rose stopped short in the path between the banks of flowers. It was a
still day, and the summer hush of the plot--a velvet stillness where the
garden held its breath--made the time momentous to her. Unconsciously
she gripped her father's hand.
"She has told you!" she breathed. Her eyes sought his face. MacLeod was
looking at her smilingly, fondly even. She shuddered.
"You are a goose, Rose," he said lightly. He released his fingers from
the clasp of hers and gave her hand a little shake before he dropped it.
"But I can't help it. If you will go on tipping over your saucer of
cream, why, you must do it, that's all."
They walked on, and at the steps she paused again, though she heard
Peter's voice within.
"You're terribly angry with me, aren't you?" she said, in a low tone,
seeming to make it half communion with herself.
"Angry, my girl! Don't say a thing like that."
"You look exactly as you did the night Ivan Gorof defied you--and the
next day he died."
MacLeod laughed again, so humorously that Peter, coming forward from the
library, his own face serious with unwelcome care, smiled involuntarily
and returned to his every-day mood of belief that, on the whole,
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