"I knew it." Her lips formed the words. Her triumphant glance went from one to another, saying, "I told you so."
Rose stood there with perfect self-possession, very white now and with the chilled look that accompanies difficult resolution. She glanced at Madam Fulton, and the old lady met her gaze eagerly with an unbelieving query.
"For heaven's sake!" she ejaculated, "Electra, why don't you speak?"
"I lived with Tom Fulton as his wife," said Rose, in the same moving voice. She might have been engaged in the rehearsal of a difficult part. No one looking at her could have said whether she duly weighed what she was announcing. "I called myself his wife because I thought I had a right to. Other people would have called me a disgraced woman."
Billy Stark now, without waiting to find the step, walked off the edge of the veranda and was presently to be seen, if any one had had eyes for him, lighting a cigar in the peaceful garden. Madam Fulton had spoken on the heels of these last words. She brightened into the most cordial animation.
"This is the most extraordinary story I ever heard in my life," she commented, with relish. "Sit down, my dear, and tell us all about it."
"There is nothing more to tell," said Rose. Her eyes traveled to Electra's face, and stayed there, though the unfriendly triumph of it shook her resolution. "I had to say this because I must say, too, that I do not want money and I will not take it. I do not want to be known as Tom Fulton's wife. I was not his wife."
"You wanted it a week ago," said Electra involuntarily. She had made up her mind not to speak, not to be severe, not to be anything that would destroy the picture Markham MacLeod must have of her in his own mind; but the words escaped her.
"That was before—" Rose stopped. She had almost said it was before her father came, but it was borne floodingly in upon her that this was not alone the reason. It was before she had felt this great allegiance to Osmond Grant.
"Your father confirms you," said Electra, yielding to her overpowering curiosity. "He says you were my brother's wife."