“You think the question of justice might come in then? Perhaps it ought. But what is justice? And where does your duty begin to be divided?” He saw her following him with alarming intensity, and he shrank from the responsibility before him. What application might not she make of his words in the case, whatever it was, which he chose not to imagine? “To tell you the truth, Miss Kenton, I’m not very clear on that point—I’m not sure that I’m disinterested.”
“Disinterested?”
“Yes; you know that I abused your confidence at luncheon; and until I know whether the wrong involved any one else—” He looked at her with hovering laughter in his eyes which took wing at the reproach in hers. “But if we are to be serious—”
“Oh no,” she said, “it isn’t a serious matter.” But in the helplessness of her sincerity she could not carry it off lightly, or hide from him that she was disappointed.
He tried to make talk about other things. She responded vaguely, and when she had given herself time she said she believed she would go to Lottie; she was quite sure she could get down the stairs alone. He pursued her anxiously, politely, and at the head of her corridor took leave of her with a distinct sense of having merited his dismissal.
“I see what you mean, Lottie,” she said, “about Mr. Breckon.”
Lottie did not turn her head on the pillow. “Has it taken you the whole day to find it out?”
XII.
The father and the mother had witnessed with tempered satisfaction the interest which seemed to be growing up between Ellen and the young minister. By this time they had learned not to expect too much of any turn she might take; she reverted to a mood as suddenly as she left it. They could not quite make out Breckon himself; he was at least as great a puzzle to them as their own child was.