ld get down the stairs alone. He
pursued her anxiously, politely, and at the head of her corridor took
leave of her with a distinct sense of having merited his dismissal.

"I see what you mean, Lottie," she said, "about Mr. Breckon."

Lottie did not turn her head on the pillow. "Has it taken you the whole
day to find it out?"

XII.

The father and the mother had witnessed with tempered satisfaction
the interest which seemed to be growing up between Ellen and the young
minister. By this time they had learned not to expect too much of any
turn she might take; she reverted to a mood as suddenly as she left it.
They could not quite make out Breckon himself; he was at least as great
a puzzle to them as their own child was.

"It seems," said Mrs. Kenton, in their first review of the affair, after
Boyne had done a brother's duty in trying to bring Ellen under their
mother's censure, "that he was the gentleman who discussed the theatre
with Boyne at the vaudeville last winter. Boyne just casually mentioned
it. I was so provoked!"

"I don't see what bearing the fact has," the judge remarked.

"Why, Boyne liked him very much that night, but now he seems to feel
very much as Lottie does about him. He thinks he laughs too much."

"I don't know that there's much harm in that," said the judge. "And I
shouldn't value Boyne's opinion of character very highly."

"I value any one's intuitions--especially children's."

"Boyne's in that middle state where he isn't quite a child. And so is
Lottie, for that matter."

"That is true," their mother assented. "And we ought to be glad of
anything that takes Ellen's mind off herself. If I could only believe
she was forgetting that wretch!"

"Does she ever speak of him?"

"She never hints of him, even. But her mind may be full of him all the
time."

The judge laughed impatiently. "It strikes me that this young Mr.
Breckon hasn't much advantage of Ellen in what Lottie calls closeness!"

"Ellen has always been very reserved. It would have been better for her
if she hadn't. Oh, I scarcely dare to hope anything! Rufus, I feel that
in everything of this kind we are very ignorant and inexperienced."

"Inexperienced!" Renton retorted. "I don't want any more experience of
the kind Ellen has given us."

"I don't mean that. I mean--this Mr. Breckon. I can't tell what attracts
him in the child. She must appear very crude and uncultivated to him.
You needn't resent it so! I know she'