rything,
though to Westover's eyes it all seemed frigidly clean. "If it goes on
as it has for the past two years," she said, "we shall have to add on a
new dining-room. I don't know as I like to have it get so large!"

"I never wanted it to go beyond the original farmhouse," said Westover.
"I've been jealous of every boarder but the first. I should have liked
to keep it for myself, and let the world know Lion's Head from my
pictures."

"I guess Mrs. Durgin thinks it was your picture that began to send
people here."

"And do you blame me, too? What if the thing I'm doing now should make
it a winter resort? Nothing could save you, then, but a fire. I believe
that's Jeff's ambition. Only he would want to put another hotel in place
of this; something that would be more popular. Then the ruin I began
would be complete, and I shouldn't come any more; I couldn't bear the
sight."

"I guess Mrs. Durgin wouldn't think it was lion's Head if you stopped
coming," said Cynthia.

"But you would know better than that," said Westover; and then he
was sorry he had said it, for it seemed to ask something of different
quality from her honest wish to make him know their regard for him.

She did not answer, but went down a long corridor to which they had
mounted, to raise the window at the end, while he raised another at the
opposite extremity. When they met at the stairway again to climb to the
story above, he said: "I am always ashamed when I try to make a person
of sense say anything silly," and she flushed, still without answering,
as if she understood him, and his meaning pleased her. "But fortunately
a person of sense is usually equal to the temptation. One ought to be
serious when he tries it with a person of the other sort; but I don't
know that one is!"

"Do you feel any draught between these windows?" asked Cynthia,
abruptly. "I don't want you should take cold."

"Oh, I'm all right," said Westover.

She went into the rooms on one side of the corridor, and put up their
windows, and flung the blinds back. He did the same on the other side.
He got a peculiar effect of desolation from the mattresses pulled down
over the foot of the bedsteads, and the dismantled interiors reflected
in the mirrors of the dressing-cases; and he was going to speak of it
when he rejoined Cynthia at the stairway leading to the third story,
when she said, "Those were Mrs. Vostrand's rooms I came out of the
last." She nodded her head over her shoul