veness more tolerant than his own. Yet he knew that if it
came to a question of forcing Ellen to do what was best for her,
or forbidding her to do what was worst, his wife would have all the
strength for the work, and he none. He asked her, hopelessly enough, "Do
you think she still cares for him?"

"I think she wishes to give him another trial; I hope she will." Kenton
was daunted, and he showed it. "She has got to convince herself, and
we have got to let her. She believes, of course, that he's here on her
account, and that flatters her. Why should she be so different from
other girls?" Mrs. Kenton demanded of the angry protest in her husband's
eye.

His spirit fell, and he said, "I only wish she were more like them."

"Well, then, she is just as headstrong and as silly, when it comes to a
thing like this. Our only hope is to let her have her own way."

"Do you suppose he cares for her, after all?"

Mrs. Kenton was silent, as if in exhaustive self-question. Then she
answered: "No, I don't in that way. But he believes he can get her."

"Then, Sarah, I think we have a duty to the poor child. You must tell
her what you have told me."

Mrs. Kenton smiled rather bitterly, in recognition of the fact that the
performance of their common duty must fall wholly to her. But she merely
said: "There is no need of my telling her. She knows it already."

"And she would take him in spite of knowing that he didn't really care
for her?"

"I don't say that. She wouldn't own it to herself."

"And what are you going to do?"

"Nothing. We must let things take their course."

They had a great deal more talk that came to the same end. They played
their sad comedy, he in the part of a father determined to save his
child from herself, and she in hers of resisting and withholding him.
It ended as it had so often ended before--he yielded, with more faith in
her wisdom than she had herself.

At luncheon the Bittridges could not join the Kentons, or be asked to do
so, because the table held only four, but they stopped on their way to
their own table, the mother to bridle and toss in affected reluctance,
while the son bragged how he had got the last two tickets to be had that
night for the theatre where he was going to take his mother. He seemed
to think that the fact had a special claim on the judge's interest, and
she to wish to find out whether Mrs. Kenton approved of theatre-going.
She said she would not think of going in Ballards