ged her whole duty toward
them without involving her in any disadvantages. Jeff had been presented
to her at Westover's, but she disliked him so promptly and decidedly
that she had left him out of even the things that she asked some other
jays to, like lectures and parlor readings for good objects. It was not
until one of her daughters met him, first at Willie Morland's tea and
then at Mrs. Bevidge's meeting, that her social conscience concerned
itself with him. At the first her daughter had not spoken to him, as
might very well have happened, since Bessie Lynde had kept him away with
her nearly all the time; but at the last she had bowed pleasantly to him
across the room, and Jeff had responded with a stiff obeisance, whose
coldness she felt the more for having been somewhat softened herself in
Mrs. Bevidge's altruistic atmosphere.

"I think he was hurt, mamma," the girl explained to her mother, "that
you've never had him to anything. I suppose they must feel it."

"Oh, well, send him a card, then," said her mother; and when Jeff got
the card, rather near the eleventh hour, he made haste to accept, not
because he cared to go to Mrs. Enderby's house, but because he hoped he
should meet Miss Lynde there.

Bessie was the first person he met after he turned from paying his
duty to the hostess. She was with her aunt, and she presented him, and
promised him a dance, which she let him write on her card. She sat out
another dance with him, and he took her to supper.

To Westover, who had gone with the increasing forlornness a man feels in
such pleasures after thirty-five, it seemed as if the two were in each
other's company the whole evening. The impression was so strong with him
that when Jeff restored Bessie to her aunt for the dance that was to be
for some one else, and came back to the supper-room, the painter tried
to satisfy a certain uneasiness by making talk with him. But Jeff would
not talk; he got away with a bottle of champagne, which he had captured,
and a plate heaped with croquettes and pease, and galantine and salad.
There were no ladies left in the room by that time, and few young men;
but the oldsters crowded the place, with their bald heads devoutly bowed
over their victual, or their frosty mustaches bathed in their drink,
singly or in groups; the noise of their talk and laughter mixed with
the sound of their eating and drinking, and the clash of the knives and
dishes. Over their stooped shoulders and past