Finally she spoke; her awed voice trembled.
"The Brook Farm letters!"
Perhaps it was this reverent hesitation which restored Madam Fulton to something of her wonted state.
"For heaven's sake, Electra," she fulminated, "what is there so sacred about Brook Farm? If anybody is going to make up letters from anywhere, why shouldn't it be from there?"
Electra was looking at Billy Stark as if she bade him save her from these shocks or tell her the whole world was rocking. But Billy twirled his eyeglass, and watched it twirling. Finally he had to meet her eye.
"Yes," he said, with a composure he did not feel, "the book is apparently not quite straight—a kind of joke, in fact."
Electra rose. She looked very thoughtful and also, Madam Fulton thought, with a quaking at her guilty heart, rather terrible. She was pinched at the nostrils and white about the lips.
"What I must do first," she was saying, as if to herself, "is to notify the club we cannot possibly have our inquiry afternoon."
"Notify them!" repeated Madam Fulton, in a spasm of fearful admiration. "Are you going to tell all those women?"
Electra included her in that absent glance. Now that there were things to arrange, dates to cancel, topics to consider, she was on her own ground. She spoke with dignity:—