nking of! I must see Ellen, I suppose.
I'll go to her now. Oh, dear, if she doesn't--if she lets such a chance
slip through her fingers--But she's quite likely to, she's so obstinate!
I wonder what she'll want us to do."

She fled to her daughter's room and found Boyne there, sitting beside
his sister's bed, giving her a detailed account of his adventure of
the day before, up to the moment Mr. Breckon met him, in charge of the
detectives. Up to that moment, it appeared to Boyne, as nearly as he
could recollect, that he had not broken down, but had behaved himself
with a dignity which was now beginning to clothe his whole experience.
In the retrospect, a quiet heroism characterized his conduct, and at the
moment his mother entered the room he was questioning Ellen as to her
impressions of his bearing when she first saw him in the grasp of the
detectives.

His mother took him by the arm, and said, "I want to speak with Ellen,
Boyne," and put him out of the door.

Then she came back and sat down in his chair. "Ellen. Mr. Breckon has
been speaking to your father. Do you know what about?"

"About his going back to New York?" the girl suggested.

Her mother kept her patience with difficulty. "No, not about that. About
you! He's asked your father--I can't understand yet why he did it,
only he's so delicate and honorable, and goodness known we appreciate
it--whether he can tell you that--that--" It was not possible for such
a mother as Mrs. Kenton to say "He loves you"; it would have sounded as
she would have said, too sickish, and she compromised on: "He likes
you, and wants to ask you whether you will marry him. And, Ellen," she
continued, in the ample silence which followed, "if you don't say you
will, I will have nothing more to do With such a simpleton. I have
always felt that you behaved very foolishly about Mr. Bittridge, but
I hoped that when you grew older you would see it as we did, and--and
behave differently. And now, if, after all we've been through with you,
you are going to say that you won't have Mr. Breckon--"

Mrs. Kenton stopped for want of a figure that would convey all the
disaster that would fall upon Ellen in such an event, and she was given
further pause when the girl gently answered, "I'm not going to say that,
momma."

"Then what in the world are you going to say?" Mrs. Kenton demanded.

Ellen had turned her face away on the pillow, and now she answered,
quietly, "When Mr. Breckon asks me I wi