stantly convinced. "Why, of
course," she said, "it can't possibly mean anything else. Why should it
be so very surprising? The time hasn't been very long, but they've been
together almost every moment; and he was taken with her from the very
beginning--I could see that. Put on your other coat," she said, as she
dusted the collar of the coat the judge was wearing. "He'll be looking
you up, at once. I can't say that it's unexpected," and she claimed a
prescience in the matter which all her words had hitherto denied.

Kenton did not notice her inconsistency. "If it were not so exactly
what I wished," he said, "I don't know that I should be surprised at
it myself. Sarah, if I had been trying to imagine any one for Ellen, I
couldn't have dreamed of a person better suited to her than this young
man. He's everything that I could wish him to be. I've seen the pleasure
and comfort she took in his way from the first moment. He seemed to make
her forget--Do you suppose she has forgotten that miserable wretch Do
you think--"

"If she hadn't, could she be letting him come to speak to you? I don't
believe she ever really cared for Bittridge--or not after he began
flirting with Mrs. Uphill." She had no shrinking from the names which
Kenton avoided with disgust. "The only question for you is to consider
what you shall say to Mr. Breckon."

"Say to him? Why, of course, if Ellen has made up her mind, there's only
one thing I can say."

"Indeed there is! He ought to know all about that disgusting Bittridge
business, and you have got to tell him."

"Sarah, I couldn't. It is too humiliating. How would it do to refer him
to--You could manage that part so much better. I don't see how I could
keep it from seeming an indelicate betrayal of the poor child--"

"Perhaps she's told him herself," Mrs. Kenton provisionally suggested.

The judge eagerly caught at the notion. "Do you think so? It would be
like her! Ellen would wish him to know everything."

He stopped, and his wife could see that he was trembling with
excitement. "We must find out. I will speak to Ellen--"

"And--you don't think I'd better have the talk with him first?"

"Certainly not!"

"Why, Rufus! You were not going to look him up?"

"No," he hesitated; but she could see that some such thing had been on
his mind.

"Surely," she said, "you must be crazy!" But she had not the heart to
blight his joy with sarcasm, and perhaps no sarcasm would have blighted
it.

"I me