“I knew it, momma,” said Ellen, sadly.

“You knew it!  How?”

“That other letter I got when we first came—­it was from his mother.”

“Did she tell—­”

“Yes.  It was terrible she seemed to feel so.  And I was sorry for her.  I thought I ought to answer it, and I did.  I told her I was sorry, too.  I tried not to blame Richard.  I don’t believe I did.  And I tried not to blame him.  She was feeling badly enough without that.”

Her father and mother looked at 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.”