when he found him feeding his fancy on the modern heroical romances; he advised him as an American adventurer to compete with the European princes paying court to her.  So thin a barrier divided that malign intelligence from Boyne’s most secret dreams that he could never feel quite safe from him, and yet he was always finding himself with him, now that he was separated from Miss Rasmith, and Mr. Breckon was taken up so much with Ellen.  On the ship he could put many things before Mr. Breckon which must here perish in his breast, or suffer the blight of this Mr. Trannel’s raillery.  The student sat near the Kentons at table, and he was no more reverent of the judge’s modest convictions than of Boyne’s fantastic preoccupations.  The worst of him was that you could not help liking him:  he had a fascination which the boy felt while he dreaded him, and now and then he did something so pleasant that when he said something unpleasant you could hardly believe it.

At the end of the concert, when he rose and stood with all the rest, while the royal party left their box, and the orchestra played the Dutch national hymn, he said, in a loud whisper, to Boyne:  “Now’s your time, my boy!  Hurry out and hand her into her carriage!”

Boyne fairly reeled at the words which translated a passage of the wild drama playing itself in his brain, and found little support in bidding his tormentor, “Shut up!” The retort, rude as it was, seemed insufficient, but Boyne tried in vain to think of something else.  He tried to punish him by separating Lottie from him, but failed as signally in that.  She went off with him, and sat in a windstuhl facing his the rest of the afternoon, with every effect of carrying on.

Boyne was helpless, with his mother against it, when he appealed to her to let him go and tell Lottie that she wanted her.  Mrs. Kenton said that she saw no harm in it, that Ellen was sitting in like manner with Mr. Breckon.

“Mr. Breckon is very different, and Ellen knows how to behave,” he urged, but his mother remained unmoved, or was too absent about something to take any interest in the matter.  In fact, she was again unhappy about Ellen, though she put on such an air of being easy about her.  Clearly, so far as her maternal surmise could fathom the case, Mr. Breckon was more and more interested in Ellen, and it was evident that the child was interested in him.  The situation was everything that was acceptable to Mrs. Kenton, but she shuddered at the cloud which hung over it, and which might any moment involve it.  Again and again she had made sure that Lottie had given Ellen no hint of Richard’s ill-advised vengeance upon Bittridge; but it was not a thing that could be kept always, and the question was whether it could be kept till Ellen had accepted Mr. Breckon and married him.  This was beyond the question of his asking her to do so, but it was so much more important that Mrs. Kenton was giving it her attention first, quite out of the order of time.  Besides,