“Well, I didn’t try to know anything about it,” Boyne retorted.

“No, that’s true,” his mother did him the justice to recognize.  “Well, what is it you want to know?” Boyne was too hurt to answer at once, and his mother had to coax him a little.  She did it sweetly, and apologized to him for saying what she had said.  After all, he was the youngest, and her baby still.  Her words and caresses took effect at last, and he stammered out, “Is everybody so, or is it only the Kentons that seem to be always putting—­well, their affections—­where it’s perfectly useless?”

His mother pushed him from her.  “Boyne, are you silly about that ridiculous old Miss Rasmith?”

“No!” Boyne shouted, savagely, “I’m not!”

“Who is it, then?”

“I sha’n’t tell you!” Boyne said, and tears of rage and shame came into his eyes.

XXI.

In his exile from his kindred, for it came practically to that, Boyne was able to add a fine gloom to the state which he commonly observed with himself when he was not giving way to his morbid fancies or his morbid fears, and breaking down in helpless subjection to the nearest member of his household.  Lottie was so taken up with her student that she scarcely quarrelled with him any more, and they had no longer those moments of union in which they stood together against the world.  His mother had cast him off, as he felt, very heartlessly, though it was really because she could not give his absurdities due thought in view of the hopeful seriousness of Ellen’s affair, and Boyne was aware that his father at the best of times was ignorant of him when he was not impatient of him.  These were not the best of times with Judge Kenton, and Boyne was not the first object of his impatience.  In the last analysis he was living until he could get home, and so largely in the hope of this that his wife at times could scarcely keep him from taking some step that would decide the matter between Ellen and Breckon at once.  They were tacitly agreed that they were waiting for nothing else, and, without making their agreement explicit, she was able to quell him by asking what he expected to do in case there was nothing between them?  Was he going to take the child back to Tuskingum, which was the same as taking her back to Bittridge? it hurt her to confront him with this question, and she tried other devices for staying and appeasing him.  She begged him now, seeing Boyne so forlorn, and hanging about the hotel alone, or moping over those ridiculous books of his, to go off with the boy somewhere and see the interesting places within such easy reach, like Leyden and Delft if he cared nothing for the place where William the Silent was shot, he ought to see the place that the Pilgrims started from.  She had counted upon doing those places herself, with her husband, and it was in a sacrifice of her ideal that she now urged him to go with Boyne.  But her preoccupation