"No, thank you, grandmother," she said. Her voice, even in its lowest notes, had a clear, full resonance. Then she laid the letter down. "I beg your pardon," she added. "I thought you were opening your mail." "No! no!" Madam Fulton cried, in a new impatience. "Go on. Read your letter. Don't mind me." But the girl was pushing it aside. She looked across the table with her direct glance, and Madam Fulton thought unwillingly how handsome she was. Electra was young, and she lacked but one thing: a girl's uncertain grace. She had all the freshness of youth with the poise of ripest womanhood. She sat straight and well, and seemed to manage her position at table as if it were a horse. Her profile was slightly aquiline and her complexion faultless in its fairness and its testimony to wholesome living. Her lips were rather thin, but the line of white teeth behind them showed exquisitely. She had a great deal of fine brown hair wound about her head in braids, in an imperial fashion. Perhaps the only fault in her face was that her eyes were of a light and not sympathetic blue. "Shall I open your mail, grandmother?" she asked with extreme deference. Madam Fulton's hand was lying on a disordered pile of letters, twenty deep, beside her plate. She pressed the hand a little closer. "No, thank you," she said. "I will attend to them myself." Electra laid down her napkin, and pushed her plate to one side, to give space for her own papers. She lifted one sheet, and holding it in her fine hands, began rather elegantly,-- "Grandmother, I have here a most interesting letter from Mrs. Furnivall Williams. She speaks of your book in the highest praise." "Oh!" said the old lady, with a shade of satire, "does she? That's very good-natured of Fanny Williams." "Let me read you what she says." Electra bent a frowning brow upon the page. "Ah, this is it. 'It was to be expected that your grandmother would write what we all wanted to read. But her "Recollections" are more than welcome. They are satisfying. They are illuminative.'" "Fanny Williams is a fool!" Electra, not glancing up, yet managed to look deeply pained. "She goes on to say, 'What a power your dear grandmother has been! I never realized it until now.'" "That's a nasty thing for Fanny Williams to write. You tell her so." "Then she asks whether you would be willing to meet the Delta Club for an afternoon of it." "Of what?" "Your book, grandmother,--your 'Recollections.'" "Electra, you drive me to drink. I have written the book. I've printed it. I've done with it. What does Fanny Williams want me to do now? Prance?" Electra was looking at her grandmother at last and in a patient hopefulness, like one awaiting a better mood. "Grandmother dear," she protested, "it almost seems as if you owe it to the world, having said so much, to say a little more." "What, for instance, Electra? What?" Electra considered, one hand smoothing out the page.