"It is certainly painful for me to hear it." "But why, why, Electra? I can't stultify myself to prove this poor girl an adventuress. I can't canonize Tom Fulton, not even if you ask me." "There are things we need not recur to. My brother is dead," said Electra, with dignity. "Yes. That's precisely why I am asking you to provide for his widow." "Suppose, then, this were true. Suppose she is what you say,--don't you feel she forfeited anything by leaving him?" "Ah, but she went back, poor girl! She went back to him when he was pretty well spent with sickness and sheer fright. Tom didn't die like a hero, Electra. Get that out of your mind." She put up both hands in an unconsidered protest. "Oh, what is the use!" she cried; and his heart smote him. "None at all," he answered. "But I mean to show you that this girl didn't walk back to any dead easy job when she undertook Tom." "Why did she do it?" "Why? From humanity, justice, honor, I suppose, the things that influence women when they stick to their bad bargains." "Where had she been meantime?" "With her father, in lodgings. That was where I met her." "Was she known by my brother's name?" "No," he hesitated, "not then. I knew her as Miss MacLeod." "Ah!" "I can see why," Peter declared, with an eager emphasis. "I never thought of it before, but can't you see? I should think a woman could, at least. The whole situation was probably so distasteful to her that she threw off even his name." "And assumed it after his death!" "No! no! She was called Madame Fulton at his apartment. I distinctly remember that." They had been immovably facing each other, but now Electra turned away and walked back to the library table, where she stood resting one hand and waiting, pale and tired, yet unchanged. This seemed to her one of the times that try men's souls, but wherein a New England conscience must abide by its traditions. "How long does she propose remaining?" she asked, out of her desire to put some limit to the distasteful situation, though she had forbidden herself to enter it with even that human interest. "Why, as long as we ask her to stay,--you, or, if she is not to expect anything from you, I. She has nothing of her own, poor girl." "Has her father repudiated her? That ought to tell something." Peter was silent for a moment. Then he said in an engaging honesty, bound as it was to hurt his own cause,-- "I don't know. I don't understand their relation altogether. Rose gives no opinions, but I fancy she is not in sympathy with him." "Yes, I fancied so." "But we mustn't fancy so. We mustn't get up an atmosphere and look through it till we see distorted facts." "Those are what I want, Peter, facts. If Miss MacLeod--" "Do you mean you won't even give her your brother's name?" "Even, Peter! What could be more decisive?" "Do you expect me to introduce her as Miss MacLeod? Do you expect me to call her so?" "I fancied you called her Rose."