“No, no, Rufus!  Let me!  It will be much better.  You’ll be sure to bungle it.”

“We must risk that.  You were quite right, Sarah.  It would have been cowardly in me to let you do it.”

“Rufus!  You know I didn’t mean it!  Surely you’re not resenting that?”

“No.  I’m glad you made me see it.  You’re all right, Sarah, and you’ll find that it will all come out all right.  You needn’t be afraid I’ll bungle it.  I shall use discretion.  Go—­”

“I shall not stir a step from this parlor!  You’ve got back all your spirit, dear,” said the old wife, with young pride in her husband.  “But I must say that Ellen is putting more upon you than she has any right to.  I think she might tell him herself.”

“No, it’s our business—­my business.  We allowed her to get in for it.  She’s quite right about it.  We must not let him commit himself to her till he knows the thing that most puts her to shame.  It isn’t enough for us to say that it was really no shame.  She feels that it casts a sort of stain—­you know what I mean, Sarah, and I believe I can make this young man know.  If I can’t, so much the worse for him.  He shall never see Ellen again.”

“Oh, Rufus!”

“Do you think he would be worthy of her if he couldn’t?”

“I think Ellen is perfectly ridiculous.”

“Then that shows that I am right in deciding not to leave this thing to you.  I feel as she does about it, and I intend that he shall.”

“Do you intend to let her run the chance of losing him?”

“That is what I intend to do.”

“Well, then, I’ll tell you what:  I am going to stay right here.  We will both see him; it’s right for us to do it.”  But at a rap on the parlor door Mrs. Kenton flew to that of her own room, which she closed upon her with a sort of Parthian whimper, “Oh, do be careful, Rufus!”

Whether Kenton was careful or not could never be known, from either Kenton himself or from Breckon.  The judge did tell him everything, and the young man received the most damning details of Ellen’s history with a radiant absence which testified that they fell upon a surface sense of Kenton, and did not penetrate to the all-pervading sense of Ellen herself below.  At the end Kenton was afraid he had not understood.

“You understand,” he said, “that she could not consent to see you before you knew just how weak she thought she had been.”  The judge stiffened to defiance in making this humiliation.  “I don’t consider, myself, that she was weak at all.”

“Of course not!” Breckon beamed back at him.

“I consider that throughout she acted with the greatest—­greatest—­And that in that affair, when he behaved with that—­that outrageous impudence, it was because she had misled the scoundrel by her kindness, her forbearance, her wish not to do him the least shadow of injustice, but to give him every chance of proving himself worthy of her tolerance; and—­”