“This is our first time,” she volunteered.
“I hope it won’t be your last. I know you will enjoy it.” She fell listless again, and Breckon imagined he had made a break. “Not,” he added, with an endeavor for lightness, “that I suppose you’re going for pleasure altogether. Women, nowadays, are above that, I understand. They go abroad for art’s sake, and to study political economy, and history, and literature—”
“My daughter,” the judge interposed, “will not do much in that way, I hope.”
The girl bent her head over her plate and frowned.
“Oh, then,” said Breckon, “I will believe that she’s going for purely selfish enjoyment. I should like to be justified in making that my object by a good example.”
Ellen looked up and gave him a look that cut him short in his glad note. The lifting of her eyelids was like the rise of the curtain upon some scene of tragedy which was all the more impressive because it seemed somehow mixed with shame. This poor girl, whom he had pitied as an invalid, was a sufferer from some spiritual blight more pathetic than broken health. He pulled his mind away from the conjecture that tempted it and went on: “One of the advantages of going over the fourth or fifth time is that you’re relieved from a discoverer’s duties to Europe. I’ve got absolutely nothing before me now, but at first I had to examine every object of interest on the Continent, and form an opinion about thousands of objects that had no interest for me. I hope Miss Kenton will take warning from me.”
He had not addressed Ellen directly, and her father answered: “We have no definite plans as yet, but we don’t mean to overwork ourselves even if we’ve come for a rest. I don’t know,” he added, “but we had better spend our summer in England. It’s easier getting about where you know the language.”
The judge seemed to refer his ideas to Breckon for criticism, and the young man felt authorized to say, “Oh, so many of them know the language everywhere now, that it’s easy getting about in any country.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” the judge vaguely deferred.
“Which,” Ellen demanded of the young man with a nervous suddenness, “do you think is the most interesting country?”