“Oh, I guess so,” said Jeff, pulling up a long blade of grass and taking it between his teeth.  “Anyway, it comes to the same thing as far as I’m concerned.  It’s for her to say what shall be done and what sha’n’t be done in her own house, even if it is a hotel.  That’s what I shall do in mine.  We’re used to these little differences; but we talk it out, and that’s the end of it.  I shouldn’t really go, though, if I didn’t think I ought to get in some work on those conditions before the thing begins regularly.  I should have liked to help here a little, for I’ve had a good time and I ought to be willing to pay for it.  But she’s in good hands.  Jackson’s well—­for him—­and she’s got Cynthia.”

The easy security of tone with which Jeff pronounced the name vexed Westover.  “I suppose your mother would hardly know how to do without her, even if you were at home,” he said, dryly.

“Well, that’s a fact,” Jeff assented, with a laugh for the hit.  “And Jackson thinks the world of her.  I believe he trusts her judgment more than he does mother’s about the hotel.  Well, I must be going.  You don’t know where Mrs. Vostrand is going to be this winter, I suppose?”

“No, I don’t,” said Westover.  He could not help a sort of blind resentment in the situation.  If he could not feel that Jeff was the best that could be for Cynthia, he had certainly no reason to regret that his thoughts could be so lightly turned from her.  But the fact anomalously incensed him as a slight to the girl, who might have been still more sacrificed by Jeff’s constancy.  He forced himself to add:  “I fancy Mrs. Vostrand doesn’t know herself.”

“I wish I didn’t know where I was going to be,” said Jeff.  “Well, good-bye, Mr. Westover.  I’ll see you in Boston.”

“Oh, good-bye.”  The painter freed himself from his brush and palette for a parting handshake, reluctantly.

Jeff plunged down the hill, waving a final adieu from the corner of the hotel before he vanished round it.

Mrs. Vostrand and her daughter were at breakfast when Westover came in after the early light had been gone some time.  They entreated him to join them at their table, and the mother said:  “I suppose you were up soon enough to see young Mr. Durgin off.  Isn’t it too bad he has to go back to college when it’s so pleasant in the country?”

“Not bad for him,” said Westover.  “He’s a young man who can stand a great deal of hard work.”  Partly because he was a little tired of Jeff, and partly because he was embarrassed in their presence by the reason of his going, he turned the talk upon the days they had known together.

Mrs. Vostrand was very willing to talk of her past, even apart from his, and she told him of her sojourn in Europe since her daughter had left school.  They spent their winters in Italy and their summers in Switzerland, where it seemed her son was still at his studies in Lausanne.  She wished him to go to Harvard, she said, and she supposed he would have to finish his preparation at one of the American schools; but she had left the choice entirely to Mr. Vostrand.