Electra also had seen Rose, lying in the long chair under the grape arbor, and left her carriage at the gate. Rose was in white. A book lay in her lap, unopened. The idle hands had clasped, and her eyes were closed. Electra, coming upon her, felt a pang, an inexplicable one, at her loveliness. It seemed half lassitude, not alone to challenge pity, but a renewed and poignant interest when she should awake. At Electra's step her eyes came open slowly, as if there were nothing in that garden ground to move her. Then with a rush of color to the face, her eyes grew large. Life, surprised life, poured in on her, and she had gained her feet with a spring. Before Electra could insist upon her own decorous distance, Rose, with a charming gesture and an insistent cordiality, had her by both hands. "How good of you," she was saying. "How good of you!" "Not at all," returned Electra, with a stiff dignity she hated, as not in the least the armor she had meant to wear. "I came to see if you would drive over to the house." This she had not meant to ask, but it seemed easier to deal with problematic characters in the course of motion than face to face and standing. Rose was eagerly ready. "My hat is here," she cried, "and my parasol. I thought I might walk up the road a bit,--but it was so hot. How good of you!" As they went down the path together, Rose in her slender grace and eager motions the significant note in the garden, Electra felt the irritation of having, for any reason, committed herself to even a short intimacy with her. But presently they were together in the carriage, and Electra spoke. "My grandmother is at home this morning. We have a guest for a few days, Mr. William Stark, of London. I thought you might be interested in meeting them both." "I shall be delighted," returned Rose, still in that warmly impulsive tone. Electra had a strong distaste for unconsidered things. They seemed to her to show lack of poise. Now she was conscious of the inconsistency of proposing that Rose should meet anybody, even Billy Stark. But in the moment of conceiving it she had remembered that Mr. Stark was a man of the world; he would know an adventuress when he saw one. Afterwards she would ask him frankly how his judgment had been affected by the siren's song. At the house she led the way into the vine-shaded sitting-room where Madam Fulton and Stark had been engaged for an hour in a battle delightful to them both. Madam Fulton sat beautifully upright in a straight-backed chair, and her old friend, with her permission, lay upon a bamboo couch, where he held his eyeglass by its ribbon in one outstretched hand and gesticulated with it, while he urged torrentially upon her the rights of a publisher to the confidence of his author. Now he came to his feet and stood punctiliously.