t each other; they did not speak, and she
asked, "Do you think I oughtn't to have written?"

Her father answered, a little tremulously: "You did right, Ellen. And I
am sure that you did it in just the right way."

"I tried to. I thought I wouldn't worry you about it."

She rose, and now her mother thought she was going to say that it put
an end to everything; that she must go back and offer herself as a
sacrifice to the injured Bittridges. Her mind had reverted to that
moment on the steamer when Ellen told her that nothing had reconciled
her to what had happened with Bittridge but the fact that all the wrong
done had been done to themselves; that this freed her. In her despair
she could not forbear asking, "What did you write to her, Ellen?"

"Nothing. I just said that I was very sorry, and that I knew how she
felt. I don't remember exactly."

She went up and kissed her mother. She seemed rather fatigued than
distressed, and her father asked her. "Are you going to bed, my dear?"

"Yes, I'm pretty tired, and I should think you would be, too, poppa.
I'll speak to poor Boyne. Don't mind Lottie. I suppose she couldn't
help saying it." She kissed her father, and slipped quietly into Boyne's
room, from which they could hear her passing on to her own before they
ventured to say anything to each other in the hopeful bewilderment to
which she had left them.

"Well?" said the judge.

"Well?" Mrs. Kenton returned, in a note of exasperation, as if she were
not going to let herself be forced to the initiative.

"I thought you thought--"

"I did think that. Now I don't know what to think. We have got to wait."

"I'm willing to wait for Ellen!"

"She seems," said Mrs. Kenton, "to have more sense than both the other
children put together, and I was afraid--"

"She might easily have more sense than Boyne, or Lottie, either."

"Well, I don't know," Mrs. Kenton began. But she did not go on to resent
the disparagement which she had invited. "What I was afraid of was her
goodness. It was her goodness that got her into the trouble, to begin
with. If she hadn't been so good, that fellow could never have fooled
her as he did. She was too innocent."

The judge could not forbear the humorous view. "Perhaps she's getting
wickeder, or not so innocent. At any rate, she doesn't seem to have been
take in by Trannel."

"He didn't pay any attention to her. He was all taken up with Lottie."

"Well, that was lucky. Sarah," said the ju