“Well, you can break off their engagements,” said the judge.
As yet, and until Ellen was off her hands, Lottie would not allow Mr. Elroy to consider himself engaged to her. His conditional devotion did not debar him from a lover’s rights, and, until Breckon came on from New York to be married, there was much more courtship of Lottie than of Ellen in the house. But Lottie saved herself in the form if not the fact, and as far as verbal terms were concerned, she was justified by them in declaring that she would not have another sop hanging round.
It was Boyne, and Boyne alone, who had any misgivings in regard to Ellen’s engagement, and these were of a nature so recondite that when he came to impart them to his mother, before they left Scheveningen, and while there was yet time for that conclusion which his father suggested to Mrs. Kenton too late, Boyne had an almost hopeless difficulty in stating them. His approaches, even, were so mystical that his mother was forced to bring him to book sharply.
“Boyne, if you don’t tell me right off just what you mean, I don’t know what I will do to you! What are you driving at, for pity’s sake? Are you saying that she oughtn’t to be engaged to Mr. Breckon?”
“No, I’m not saying that, momma,” said Boyne, in a distress that caused his mother to take a reef in her impatience.
“Well, what are you saying, then?”
“Why, you know how Ellen is, momma. You know how conscientious and—and—sensitive. Or, I don’t mean sensitive, exactly.”
“Well?”
“Well, I don’t think she ought to be engaged to Mr. Breckon out of—gratitude.”
“Gratitude?”