“With the exception of Miss Kenton,” he addressed himself to the party, “you’re all so easy and careless that if you don’t look out you’ll lose me.  Miss Kenton, I wish you would keep an eye on me.  I don’t want to get lost.”

Ellen laughed—­she could not help it—­and her laughing made it less possible than before for Breckon to unbend and meet Trannel on his own ground, to give him joke for joke, to exchange banter with him.  He might never have been willing to do that, but now he shrank from it, in his realization of their likeness, with an abhorrence that rendered him rigid.

The judge was walking ahead with Boyne, and his back expressed such severe disapproval that, between her fear that Trannel would say something to bring her father’s condemnation on him and her sense of their inhospitable attitude towards one who was their guest, in a sort, she said, with her gentle gayety, “Then you must keep near me, Mr. Trannel.  I’ll see that nothing happens.”

“That’s very sweet of you,” said Trannel, soberly.  Whether he had now vented his malicious humor and was ready to make himself agreeable, or was somewhat quelled by the unfriendly ambient he had created, or was wrought upon by her friendliness, he became everything that could be wished in a companion for a day’s pleasure.  He took the lead at the station, and got them a compartment in the car to themselves for the little run to Leyden, and on the way he talked very well.  He politely borrowed Boyne’s Baedeker, and decided for the party what they had best see, and showed an acceptable intelligence, as well as a large experience in the claims of Leyden upon the visitor’s interest.  He had been there often before, it seemed, and in the event it appeared that he had chosen the days sightseeing wisely.

He no longer addressed himself respectfully to Ellen alone, but he re-established himself in Boyne’s confidence with especial pains, and he conciliated Breckon by a recognition of his priority with Ellen with a delicacy refined enough for even the susceptibility of a lover alarmed for his rights.  If he could not overcome the reluctance of the judge, he brought him to the civil response which any one who tried for Kenton’s liking achieved, even if he did not merit it, and there remained no more reserve in Kenton’s manner than there had been with the young man from the first.  He had never been a persona grata to the judge, and if he did not become so now, he at least ceased to be actively displeasing.

That was the year before the young Queen came to her own, and in the last days of her minority she was visiting all the cities of her future dominion with the queen-mother.  When Kenton’s party left the station they found Leyden as gay for her reception as flags and banners could make the gray old town, and Trannel relapsed for a moment so far as to suggest that the decorations were in honor of Boyne’s presence, but he did not abuse the laugh that this made to Boyne’s further shame.