“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.”