y Vaults,
with a due demand for Westover's admission to it. He registered his
letter, and he jocosely promised Westover to do as much for him some
day, in pleading that there was really no one else he could turn to. He
put the whole business upon him, and Westover discharged himself of it
as briefly as he could by delivering the papers to the lawyer he had
already consulted for Whitwell.

"Is this another charity patient?" asked his friend, with a grin.

"No," replied Westover. "You can charge this fellow along the whole
line."

Before he parted with the lawyer he had his misgivings, and he said: "I
shouldn't want the blackguard to think I had got a friend a fat job out
of him."

The lawyer laughed intelligently. "I shall only make the usual charge.
Then he is a blackguard."

"There ought to be a more blistering word."

"One that would imply that he was capable of setting fire to his
property?"

"I don't say that. But I'm glad he was away when it took fire," said
Westover.

"You give him the benefit of the doubt."

"Yes, 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