if nothing had happened. He put a great deal of real feeling into this
request, and he offered to go and spend a year in Europe, if his mother
thought that Cynthia would be more reconciled to his coming back at the
end of that time.

His mother answered with a dryness to which his ear supplied the tones
of her voice, that she would try to get along in the management of
Lion's Head till his brother got back, but that she had no objection to
his going to Europe for a year if he had the money to spare. Jeff could
not refuse her joke, as he felt it, a certain applause, but he thought
it pretty rough that his mother should take part so decidedly against
him as she seemed to be doing. He had expected her to be angry with him,
but before they parted she had seemed to find some excuse for him, and
yet here she was siding against her own son in what he might very well
consider an unnatural way. If Jackson had been at home he would have
laid it to his charge; but he knew that Cynthia would have scorned
even to speak of him with his mother, and he knew too well his mother's
slight for Whitwell to suppose that he could have influenced her.
His mind turned in momentary suspicion to Westover. Had Westover,
he wondered, with a purpose to pay him up for it forming itself
simultaneously with his question, been setting his mother against him?
She might have written to Westover to get at the true inwardness of his
behavior, and Westover might have written her something that had made
her harden her heart against him. But upon reflection this seemed out of
character for both of them; and Jeff was thrown back upon his mother's
sober second thought of his misconduct for an explanation of her
coldness. He could not deny that he had grievously disappointed her in
several ways. But he did not see why he should not take a certain hint
from her letter, or construct a hint from it, at one with a vague intent
prompted by his own restless and curious vanity. Since he had parted
with Bessie Lynde, on terms of humiliation for her which must have been
anguish for him if he had ever loved her, or loved anything but his
power over her, he had remained in absolute ignorance of her. He had
not heard where she was or how she was; but now, as the few weeks before
Class Day and Commencement crumbled away, he began to wonder why she
made no sign. He believed that since she had been willing to go so
far to get him, she would not be willing to give him up so easi