d. You might put them beside my bed."

Bessie slept soundly, from exhaustion, and in that provisional fashion in
which people who have postponed a care to a given moment are able to
sleep. But she woke early, and crept down-stairs before any one else was
astir, and went to the library. The decanters stood there on the table,
empty. Her brother lay a shapeless heap in one of the deep arm-chairs.

XXXVII.

Westover got home from the Enderby dance at last with the forecast of a
violent cold in his system, which verified itself the next morning. He
had been housed a week, when Jeff Durgin came to see him. "Why didn't you
let me know you were sick?" he demanded, "I'd have come and looked after
you."

"Thank you," said Westover, with as much stiffness as he could command in
his physical limpness. "I shouldn't have allowed you to look after me;
and I want you to understand, now, that there can't be any sort of
friendliness between us till you've accounted for your behavior with
Lynde the other night."

"You mean at the party?" Jeff asked, tranquilly.

"Yes!" cried Westover. "If I had not been shut up ever since, I should
have gone to see you and had it out with you. I've only let you in, now,
to give you the chance to explain; and I refuse to hear a word from you
till you do." Westover did not think that this was very forcible, and he
was not much surprised that it made Jeff smile.

"Why, I don't know what there is to explain. I suppose you think I got
him drunk; I know what you thought that night. But he was pretty well
loaded when he struck my champagne. It wasn't a question of what he was
going to do any longer, but how he was going to do it. I kept an eye on
him, and at the right time I helped the caterer's man to get him up into
that room where he wouldn't make any trouble. I expected to go back and
look after him, but I forgot him."

"I don't suppose, really, that you're aware what a devil's argument that
is," said Westover. "You got Lynde drunk, and then you went back to his
sister, and allowed her to treat you as if you were a gentleman, and
didn't deserve to be thrown out of the house." This at last was something
like what Westover had imagined he would say to Jeff, and he looked to
see it have the imagined effect upon him.

"Do you suppose," asked Jeff, with cheerful cynicism, "that it was the
first time she was civil to a man her brother got drunk with?"

"No! But all the more you ought to have cons