ioning him. This might well
have been necessary with the mother's pride in her son, which knew no
stop when it once began to indulge itself. What struck Westover more
than the girl's self-possession when they talked of Jeff was a certain
austerity in her with regard to him. She seemed to hold herself tense
against any praise of him, as if she should fail him somehow if she
relaxed at all in his favor.

This, at least, was the rather mystifying impression which Westover got
from her evident wish to criticise and understand exactly all that he
reported, rather than to flatter herself from it. Whatever her motive
was, he was aware that through it all she permitted herself a closer and
fuller trust of himself. At times it was almost too implicit; he would
have liked to deserve it better by laying open all that had been in his
heart against Jeff. But he forbore, of course, and he took refuge, as
well as he could, in the respect by which she held herself at a reverent
distance from him when he could not wholly respect himself.

XL.

One morning Westover got leave from Mrs. Durgin to help Cynthia open
the dim rooms and cold corridors at the hotel to the sun and air. She
promised him he should take his death, but he said he would wrap up
warm, and when he came to join the girl in his overcoat and fur cap, he
found Cynthia equipped with a woollen cloud tied around her head, and a
little shawl pinned across her breast.

"Is that all?" he reproached her. "I ought to have put on a single
wreath of artificial flowers and some sort of a blazer for this
expedition. Don't you think so, Mrs. Durgin?"

"I believe women can stand about twice as much cold as you can, the best
of you," she answered, grimly.

"Then I must try to keep myself as warm as I can with work," he said.
"You must let me do all the rough work of airing out, won't you,
Cynthia?"

"There isn't any rough work about it," she answered, in a sort of
motherly toleration of his mood, without losing anything of her filial
reverence.

She took care of him, he perceived, as she took care of her brother and
her father, but with a delicate respect for his superiority, which was
no longer shyness.

They began with the office and the parlor, where they flung up the
windows, and opened the doors, and then they opened the dining-room,
where the tables stood in long rows, with the chairs piled on them legs
upward. Cynthia went about with many sighs for the dust on eve