"What makes you hate her so?"
Tears came slowly into Electra's eyes. They surprised her as much as they did him. She was not used to crying, and she held them from falling, with a proud restraint. Electra felt very lonely at that moment in a world which would not understand. She was upholding truth and justice, and she was accused of mean personal motives. She had proposed a picturesque sacrifice for the sake of abstract right, and she could not be unconscious that the act ought to look rather beautiful. Yet Peter saw no beauty in it, and grandmother had called her a fool. Peter, seeing the tears, was enormously embarrassed by them. He could only kiss her hand in great humility. He, on his part, put justice cheerfully aside.
"How could I?" he murmured, with the contrition of the male who has learned that tears are to be stanched without delay. "How could I?" But Electra, on her feet, had drawn her hand away from him. She felt only haste, haste to conclude her abnegation, perhaps even to forestall any question of the house by getting the matter out of her hands before MacLeod came back and she had to reckon with his testimony.
"I am not crying," she said proudly. "I must go and talk to grandmother. Promise me this. Don't tell her"—she hesitated.
"Rose?"
"Don't tell her I have spoken of this."
She had gone, and Peter helplessly watched her walking up the path. Then he took his own way home. "My stars!" he muttered from time to time. His chief desire at the moment was to escape from anything so strenuous as Electra's moral life. It made a general and warm-hearted obliquity the only possible condition of conduct in a pretty world. Peter looked round at it admiringly then, as the shadow of Electra's earnestness withdrew into the distance. It was such a darling world, there were such dear shadows and beguiling lights and all things adorable to paint. He cast off the mood that teased him, and walking faster, began to whistle. It seemed to him that there were so many agreeable deeds to do, and so much time to do them in, that he must simply bestir himself to use half the richness of things. But when he got into the garden, the honeysuckle smelled so sweet that he sat down at its foot and breathed it until he went to sleep.
Electra walked into the library, where Madam Fulton sat at her tatting and Billy Stark read aloud to her from an idle book. Electra felt that she could not possibly delay. All her affairs must be settled at once and the ends knit up.
"I beg your pardon," she said. "Grandmother, may I speak to you a moment?"
Madam Fulton laid down her work.