第75章 XXIV.(2)

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 Iam 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.""He didn't pay any attention to her. He was all taken up with Lottie.""Well, that was lucky. Sarah," said the judge, "do you think he is like Bittridge?""He's made me think of him all the time."

"It's curious," the judge mused. "I have always noticed how our faults repeat themselves, but I didn't suppose our fates would always take the same shape, or something like it." Mrs. Kenton stared at him. "When this other one first made up to us on the boat my heart went down. Ithought of Bittridge so."

"Mr. Breckon?"

"Yes, the same lightness; the same sort of trifling-- Didn't you notice it?""No--yes, I noticed it. But I wasn't afraid for an instant. I saw that he was good.""Oh!"

"What I'm afraid of now is that Ellen doesn't care anything about him.""He isn't wicked enough?"

"I don't say that. But it would be too much happiness to expect in one short life."The judge could not deny the reasonableness of her position. He could only oppose it. "Well, I don't think we've had any more than our share of happiness lately."No one except Boyne could have made Trannel's behavior a cause of quarrel, but the other Kentons made it a cause of coldness which was quite as effective. In Lottie this took the form of something so active, so positive, that it was something more than a mere absence of warmth.

Before she came clown to breakfast the next morning she studied a stare in her mirror, and practised it upon Trannel so successfully when he came up to speak to her that it must have made him doubt whether he had ever had her acquaintance. In his doubt he ventured to address her, and then Lottie turned her back upon him in a manner that was perfectly convincing. He attempted a smiling ease with Mrs. Kenton and the judge, but they shared neither his smile nor his ease, and his jocose questions about the end of yesterday's adventures, which he had not been privy to, did not seem to appeal to the American sense of humor in them. Ellen was not with them, nor Boyne, but Trannel was not asked to take either of the vacant places at the table, even when Breckon took one of them, after a decent exchange of civilities with him. He could only saunter away and leave Mrs. Kenton to a little pang.

"Tchk!" she made. "I'm sorry for him!"

"So am I," said the judge. "But he will get over it--only too soon, I'm afraid. I don't believe he's very sorry for himself."They had not advised with Breckon, and he did not feel authorized to make any comment. He seemed preoccupied, to Mrs. Kenton's eye, when she turned it upon him from Trannel's discomfited back, lessening in the perspective, and he answered vaguely to her overture about his night's rest. Lottie never made any conversation with Breckon, and she now left him to himself, with some remnants of the disapproval which she found on her hands after crushing Trannel. It could not be said that Breckon was aware of her disapproval, and the judge had no apparent consciousness of it. He and Breckon tried to make something of each other, but failed, and it all seemed a very defeating sequel to Mrs. Kenton after the triumphal glow of the evening before. When Lottie rose, she went with her, alleging her wish to see if Boyne had eaten his breakfast. She confessed, to Breckon's kind inquiry, that Boyne did not seem very well, and that she had made him take his breakfast in his room, and she did not think it necessary to own, even to so friendly a witness as Mr. Breckon, that Boyne was ashamed to come down, and dreaded meeting Trannel so much that she was giving him time to recover his self-respect and courage.