“Oh, do give me a rose out of that,” she entreated, in travestied imploring, as he stood looking at a withered bouquet which the steward had brought up with his rugs.
“I’m takin’ it home,” he explained, coldly.
“And I want to take a rose back to New York. I want to give it to a friend of mine there.”
Mr. Pogis hesitated. Then he asked, “A man?” “Well, rather!” said Lottie.
He answered nothing, but looked definitively down at the flowers in his hand.
Boyne remained fixed in fealty to the Rasmiths, with whom Breckon was also talking as Mrs. Kenton came up with the judge. She explained how sorry her daughter Ellen was at not being able to say goodbye; she was still not at all well; and the ladies received her excuses with polite patience. Mrs. Rasmith said she did not know what they should do without Boyne, and Miss Rasmith put her arm across his shoulders and pulled him up to her, and implored, “Oh, give him to me, Mrs. Kenton!”
Boyne stole an ashamed look at his mother, and his father said, with an unbending to Breckon which must have been the effect of severe expostulation from Mrs. Kenton, “I suppose you and the ladies will go to Paris together.”
“Why, no,” Breckon said, and he added, with mounting confusion, “I--I had arranged to keep on to Rotterdam. I was going to mention it.”
“Keep on to Rotterdam!” Mrs. Rasmith’s eyes expressed the greatest astonishment.
“Why, of course, mother!” said her daughter. “Don’t you know? Boyne told us.”
Boyne, after their parting, seized the first chance of assuring his mother that he had not told Miss Rasmith that, for he had not known it, and he went so far in her condemnation to wonder how she could say such a thing. His mother said it was not very nice, and then suggested that perhaps she had heard it from some one else, and thought it was he. She acquitted him of complicity with Miss Rasmith in forbearing to contradict her; and it seemed to her a fitting time to find out from Boyne what she honestly could about the relation of the Rasmiths to Mr. Breckon. It was very little beyond their supposition, which every one else had shared, that he was going to land with them at Boulogne, and he must have changed his mind very suddenly. Boyne had not heard the Rasmiths speak of it. Miss Rasmith never spoke of Mr. Breckon at all; but she seemed to want to talk of Ellen; she was always asking about her, and what was the matter with her, and how long she had been sick.