rs.
Vostrand's error.
"Yes, I really must, now," he said.
"Well, then," she returned, distractedly, "do come often."
He hurried out to avoid meeting Genevieve. He passed her, on the public
stairs of the house, but he saw that she did not recognize him in the
dim light.
Late that night he was startled by steps that seemed to be seeking their
way up the stairs to his landing, and then by a heavy knock on his door.
He opened it, and confronted Jeff Durgin.
"May I come in, Mr. Westover?" he asked, with unwonted deference.
"Yes, come in," said Westover, with no great relish, setting his door
open, and then holding onto it a moment, as if he hoped that, having
come in, Jeff might instantly go out again.
His reluctance was lost upon Jeff, who said, unconscious of keeping his
hat on: "I want to talk with you--I want to tell you something--"
"All right. Won't you sit down?"
At this invitation Jeff seemed reminded to take his hat off, and he put
it on the floor beside his chair. "I'm not in a scrape, this time--or,
rather, I'm in the worst kind of a scrape, though it isn't the kind that
you want bail for."
"Yes," Westover prompted.
"I don't know whether you've noticed--and if you haven't it don't
make any difference--that I've seemed to--care a good deal for Miss
Vostrand?"
Westover saw no reason why he should not be frank, and said: "Too much,
I've fancied sometimes, for a student in his Sophomore year."
"Yes, I know that. Well, it's over, whether it was too much or too
little." He laughed in a joyless, helpless way, and looked deprecatingly
at Westover. "I guess I've been making a fool of myself--that's all."
"It's better to make a fool of one's self than to make a fool of some
one else," said Westover, oracularly.
"Yes," said Jeff, apparently finding nothing more definite in the oracle
than people commonly find in oracles. "But I think," he went on, with
a touch of bitterness, "that her mother might have told me that she was
engaged--or the same as engaged."
"I don't know that she was bound to take you seriously, or to suppose
you took yourself so, at your age and with your prospects in life. If
you want to know,"--Westover faltered, and then went on--"she began to
be kind to you because she was afraid that you might think she didn't
take your coming home second-cabin in the right way; and one thing led
to another. You mustn't blame her for what's happened."
Westover defended Mrs. Vostran
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