of every kind of doubt."

LII.

Westover once more promised himself to have nothing to do with Jeff
Durgin or his affairs. But he did not promise this so confidently as upon
former occasions, and he instinctively waited for a new complication. He
could not understand why Jeff should not have come home to look after his
insurance, unless it was because he had become interested in some woman
even beyond his concern for his own advantage. He believed him capable of
throwing away advantages for disadvantages in a thing of that kind, but
he thought it more probable that he had fallen in love with one whom he
would lose nothing by winning. It did not seem at all impossible that he
should have again met Bessie Lynde, and that they should have made up
their quarrel, or whatever it was. Jeff would consider that he had done
his whole duty by Cynthia, and that he was free to renew his suit with
Bessie; and there was nothing in Bessie's character, as Westover
understood it, to prevent her taking him back upon a very small show of
repentance if the needed emotions were in prospect. He had decided pretty
finally that it would be Bessie rather than another when he received a
letter from Mrs. Vostrand. It was dated at Florence, and after some
pretty palaver about their old friendship, which she only hoped he
remembered half as fondly as she did, the letter ran:

"I am turning to you now in a very strange difficulty, but I do not
know that I should turn to you even now, and knowing all I do of
your goodness, if I were not asked to do so by another.

"I believe we have not heard from each other since the first days of
my poor Genevieve's marriage, when everything looked so bright and
fair, and we little realized the clouds that were to overcast her
happiness. It is a long story, and I will not go into it fully.
The truth is that poor Gigi did not treat her very kindly, and that
she has not lived with him since the birth of their little girl, now
nearly two years old, and the sweetest little creature in the world;
I wish you could see her; I am sure it would inspire your pencil
with the idea of an angel-child. At first I hoped that the
separation would be only temporary, and that when Genevieve had
regained her strength she would be willing to go back to her
husband; but nothing would induce her to do so. In fact, poor Gigi
had spent all her money, and they would have had nothing t