, Nell. Momma, you tell
Boyne to hurry, and come to Ellen as soon as he's done, and then I will
go. Don't let anybody take my place."

"I wish," said Ellen, still from under the sheet, "that momma would have
your breakfast sent here. I don't want Boyne."

Women apparently do not require any explanation of these swift
vicissitudes in one another, each knowing probably in herself the nerves
from which they proceed. Mrs. Kenton promptly assented, in spite of the
sulky reluctance which Lottie's blue eyes looked at her; she motioned
her violently to silence, and said: "Yes, I will, Ellen. I will send
breakfast for both of you."

When she was gone, Ellen uncovered her face and asked Lottie to dip a
towel in water and give it to her. As she bathed her eyes she said, "You
don't care, do you, Lottie?"

"Not very much," said Lottie, unsparingly. "I can go to lunch, I
suppose."

"Maybe I'll go to lunch with you," Ellen suggested, as if she were
speaking of some one else.

Lottie wasted neither sympathy nor surprise on the question. "Well,
maybe that would be the best thing. Why don't you come to breakfast?"

"No, I won't go to breakfast. But you go."

When Lottie joined her family in the dining-saloon she carelessly
explained that Ellen had said she wanted to be alone. Before the young
man, who was the only other person besides the Kentons at their table,
her mother could not question her with any hope that the bad would not
be made worse, and so she remained silent. Judge Kenton sat with his
eyes fixed on his plate, where as yet the steward had put no breakfast
for him; Boyne was supporting the dignity of the family in one of those
moments of majesty from which he was so apt to lapse into childish
dependence. Lottie offered him another alternative by absently laying
hold of his napkin on the table.

"That's mine," he said, with husky gloom.

She tossed it back to him with prompt disdain and a deeply eye-lashed
glance at a napkin on her right. The young man who sat next it said,
with a smile, "Perhaps that's yours-unless I've taken my neighbor's."

Lottie gave him a stare, and when she had sufficiently punished him for
his temerity said, rather sweetly, "Oh, thank you," and took the napkin.

"I hope we shall all have use for them before long," the young man
ventured again.

"Well, I should think as much," returned the girl, and this was the
beginning of a conversation which the young man shared successively with
t