out of it all. And I'm
ashamed."

"You mustn't be," she said, quietly; and she added, "I suppose it would
be like a kind of defeat if you didn't go back?"

"I shouldn't care for the appearance of defeat," he said, courageously.
"The great question is, whether somebody else wouldn't be of more use in
my place."

"Nobody could be," said she, in a sort of impassioned absence, and then
coming to herself, "I mean, they wouldn't think so, I don't believe."

"Then you advise--"

"No, no! I can't; I don't. I'm not fit to have an opinion about such a
thing; it would be crazy. But poppa--"

They were at the door of the gangway, and she slipped within and left
him. His nerves tingled, and there was a glow in his breast. It was
sweet to have surprised that praise from her, though he could not have
said why he should value the praise or a girl of her open ignorance and
inexperience in everything that would have qualified her to judge him.
But he found himself valuing it supremely, and wonderingly wishing to be
worthy of it.

XVII.

Ellen discovered her father with a book in a distant corner of the
dining-saloon, which he preferred to the deck or the library for his
reading, in such intervals as the stewards, laying and cleaning the
tables, left him unmolested in it. She advanced precipitately upon him,
and stood before him in an excitement which, though he lifted his dazed
eyes to it from his page, he was not entirely aware of till afterwards.
Then he realized that her cheeks were full of color, and her eyes of
light, and that she panted as if she had been running when she spoke.

"Poppa," she said, "there is something that Mr. Breckon wants to speak
to you--to ask you about. He has asked me, but I want you to see him,
for I think he had better tell you himself."

While he still stared at her she was as suddenly gone as she had come,
and he remained with his book, which the meaning had as suddenly left.
There was no meaning in her words, except as he put it into them, and
after he had got it in he struggled with it in a sort of perfunctory
incredulity. It was not impossible; it chiefly seemed so because
it seemed too good to be true; and the more he pondered it the more
possible, if not probable, it became. He could not be safe with it till
he had submitted it to his wife; and he went to her while he was sure of
repeating Ellen's words without varying from them a syllable.

To his astonishment, Mrs. Kenton was in