The logic of his conclusion was strengthened at breakfast by her continued absence; and this time Mrs. Kenton made no apologies for her.  The judge was a shade less severe; or else Breckon did not put himself so much in the way to be withheld as he had the night before.  Boyne and Lottie carried on a sort of muted scrap, unrebuked by their mother, who seemed too much distracted in some tacit trouble to mind them.  From time to time Breckon found her eyes dwelling upon him wonderingly, entreatingly; she dropped them, if she caught his, and colored.

In the afternoon it was early evident that they were approaching Boulogne.  The hatch was opened and the sailors began getting up the baggage of the passengers who were going to disembark.  It seemed a long time for everybody till the steamer got in; those going ashore sat on their hand-baggage for an hour before the tug came up to take, them off.  Mr. Pogis was among them; he had begun in the forenoon to mark the approaching separation between Lottie and himself by intervals of unmistakable withdrawal.  Another girl might have cared, but Lottie did not care, for her failure to get a rise out of him by her mockingly varied “Oh, I say!” and “Well, rather!” In the growth of his dignified reserve Mr. Pogis was indifferent to jeers.  By whatever tradition of what would or would not do he was controlled in relinquishing her acquaintance, or whether it was in obedience to some imperative ideal, or some fearful domestic influence subtly making itself felt from the coasts of his native island, or some fine despair of equalling the imagined grandeur of Lottie’s social state in Tuskingum by anything he could show her in England, it was certain that he was ending with Lottie then and there.  At the same time he was carefully defining himself from the Rasmiths, with whom he must land.  He had his state-room things put at an appreciable distance, where he did not escape a final stab from Lottie.

“Oh, do give me a rose out of that,” she entreated, in travestied imploring, as he stood looking at a withered bouquet which the steward had brought up with his rugs.

“I’m takin’ it home,” he explained, coldly.

“And I want to take a rose back to New York.  I want to give it to a friend of mine there.”

Mr. Pogis hesitated.  Then he asked, “A man?” “Well, rather!” said Lottie.

He answered nothing, but looked definitively down at the flowers in his hand.

“Oh, I say!” Lottie exulted.

Boyne remained fixed in fealty to the Rasmiths, with whom Breckon was also talking as Mrs. Kenton came up with the judge.  She explained how sorry her daughter Ellen was at not being able to say goodbye; she was still not at all well; and the ladies received her excuses with polite patience.  Mrs. Rasmith said she did not know what they should do without Boyne, and Miss Rasmith put her arm across his shoulders and pulled him up to her, and implored, “Oh, give him to me, Mrs. Kenton!”