Then he added, solemnly, "It had no more to do with you, Ellen, than an
offence from some hateful animal--"

"Oh, how good you are!" The fingers folded themselves, and her arms
weakened so that there was nothing to keep him from drawing her to him.
"What--what are you doing?" she asked, with her face smothered against
his.

"Oh, Ell-en, Ellen, Ellen! Oh, my love, my dearest, my best!"

"But I have been such a fool!" she protested, imagining that she was
going to push him from her, but losing herself in him more and more.

"Yes, yes, darling! I know it. That's why I love you so!"

XXVI.

"There is just one thing," said the judge, as he wound up his watch that
night, "that makes me a little uneasy still."

Mrs. Kenton, already in her bed turned her face upon him with a
despairing "Tchk! Dear! What is it? I thought we had talked over
everything."

"We haven't got Lottie's consent yet."

"Well, I think I see myself asking Lottie!" Mrs. Kenton began, before
she realized her husband's irony. She added, "How could you give me such
a start?"

"Well, Lottie has bossed us so long that I couldn't help mentioning it,"
said the judge.

It was a lame excuse, and in its most potential implication his
suggestion proved without reason. If Lottie never gave her explicit
approval to Ellen's engagement, she never openly opposed it. She treated
it, rather, with something like silent contempt, as a childish weakness
on Ellen's part which was beneath her serious consideration. Towards
Breckon, her behavior hardly changed in the severity which she had
assumed from the moment she first ceased to have any use for him. "I
suppose I will have to kiss him," she said, gloomily, when her mother
told her that he was to be her brother, and she performed the rite with
as much coldness as was ever put in that form of affectionate welcome.
It is doubtful if Breckon perfectly realized its coldness; he never
knew how much he enraged her by acting as if she were a little girl,
and saying lightly, almost trivially, "I'm so glad you're going to be a
sister to me."

With Ellen, Lottie now considered herself quits, and from the first hour
of Ellen's happiness she threw off all the care with all the apparent
kindness which she had used towards her when she was a morbid invalid.
Here again, if Lottie had minded such a thing, she might have been as
much vexed by Ellen's attitude as by Breckon's. Ellen never once noticed
the withdrawal of her