“It is unusual,” the judge began.

“Yes, Yes; I know that.  And for that reason I speak first to you.  I’ll be ruled by you implicitly.”

“I don’t mean that,” Kenton said.  “I would have expected that you would speak to her first.  But I get your point of view, and I must say I think you’re right.  I think you are behaving—­honorably.  I wish that every one was like you.  But I can’t say anything now.  I must talk with her mother.  My daughter’s life has not been happy.  I can’t tell you.  But as far as I am concerned, and I think Mrs. Kenton, too, I would be glad —­We like you Mr. Breckon.  We think you are a good man.

“Oh, thank you.  I’m not so sure—­”

“We’d risk it.  But that isn’t all.  Will you excuse me if I don’t say anything more just yet—­and if I leave you?”

“Why, certainly.”  The judge had risen and pushed back his chair, and Breckon did the same.  “And I shall—­hear from you?”

“Why, certainly,” said the judge in his turn.

“It isn’t possible that you put him off!” his wife reproached him, when he told what had passed between him and Breckon.  “Oh, you couldn’t have let him think that we didn’t want him for her!  Surely you didn’t!”

“Will you get it into your head,” he flamed back, “that he hasn’t spoken to Ellen yet, and I couldn’t accept him till she had?”

“Oh yes.  I forgot that.”  Mrs. Kenton struggled with the fact, in the difficulty of realizing so strange an order of procedure.  “I suppose it’s his being educated abroad that way.  But, do go back to him, Rufus, and tell him that of course—­”

“I will do nothing of the kind, Sarah!  What are you thinking of?”

“Oh, I don’t know what I’m thinking 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.