And at the moment MacLeod came up the steps, without hesitation she went to meet him. Any one that night might have been a messenger from the richer world she coveted. She saw him there smiling at her in the dim hall light, and the old feeling came back that she had known him before and waited for him a long time. They had touched hands and he had gone with her to the sitting-room before she realized that such silent meetings were not the ordinary ones. "Did Peter come with you?" she asked unnecessarily. "No. He wanted to." "I am glad to see you!" MacLeod spared no time. "You have been very kind," he said, "to my little girl." Rose, as any sort of little girl, implied an incredible diminishing; but the phrase served in the interest of conversational ease. Electra's eyes were on him, absorbed and earnest. There was nothing she believed in so much, at that moment, as the clarity of MacLeod's mind and heart. It seemed belittling him even to withdraw into the coverts of ordinary talk, and, if she wanted his testimony, to surprise it out of him by stale devices. She was worshiping the truth very hard, and there was no effort in putting her question crudely:-- "Mr. MacLeod, was your daughter married to my brother?" He met her gaze with the assurance she had expected. It seemed noble to her. At last, Electra reflected with a throb of pride, she was on the heights in worthy company. "Yes," he said, not hesitating, "she was his wife." Electra drew a long breath. "Then," she answered, "I shall know what to do." He bent toward her an embracing look. It promised her a great deal: comprehension, sympathy, almost a kind of love. "What shall you do?" he asked. Electra choked a little. Her throat hurt her, not at the loss of what she was going to relinquish, but at the greatness of sacrifice with somebody by to take cognizance of the act. He would not, like Madam Fulton, call her a fool. He might even see where the action placed her, on ground he also had a right to, from other deeds as noble. "I supposed I had inherited my brother's property," she said, in a low and penetrating voice. "I shall make it over to her." MacLeod put out his hand, and she laid hers within it. When he spoke, it was with a moved restraint. "That is a good deal to do." "It is incumbent on me--ethically." At that instant she had a throb of high triumph in remembering that he, at least, would not gird at her choice of terms. "It is what you would do," he said warmly. "It is exactly what you would do." "I cannot do otherwise." They seemed to be engaged in antiphonal praises of abstract right. It gave Electra a solemn satisfaction. She could hardly leave the subject. "I wish to do everything in my power," she announced. "I cannot ask her to live here, because I may not be here long myself." "You will marry Peter and go away!"