that came of this error. Kenton was amazed, and then consoled, and then
afflicted that Ellen was not disgusted with it; and in his conferences
with his wife he fumed and fretted at his own culpable folly, and tried
to get back of the time he had committed it, in that illusion which
people have with trouble that it could somehow be got rid of if it could
fairly be got back of; till the time came when his wife could no longer
share his unrest in this futile endeavor.

She said, one night when they had talked late and long, "That can't be
helped now; and the question is what are we going to do to stop it."

The judge evaded the point in saying, "The devil of it is that all the
nice fellows are afraid of her; they respect her too much, and the very
thing which ought to disgust her with this chap is what gives him his
power over her. I don't know what we are going to do, but we must break
it off, somehow."

"We might take her with us somewhere," Mrs. Kenton suggested.

"Run away from the fellow? I think I see myself! No, we have got to
stay and face the thing right here. But I won't have him about the house
any more, understand that. He's not to be let in, and Ellen mustn't see
him; you tell her I said so. Or no! I will speak to her myself." His
wife said that he was welcome to do that; but he did not quite do it. He
certainly spoke to his daughter about her, lover, and he satisfied
himself that there was yet nothing explicit between them. But she was so
much less frank and open with him than she had always been before that he
was wounded as well as baffled by her reserve. He could not get her to
own that she really cared for the fellow; but man as he was, and old man
as he was, he could not help perceiving that she lived in a fond dream of