“No, no, I haven’t yet,” said Mrs. Vostrand.

“And if I advised not, you wouldn’t?”

“Ah, that’s another thing!”

“When are you going to take possession, Mrs. Vostrand?”

“Oh, at once, I suppose—­if we do!”

“And may I come in when I’m hungry, just as I used to do in Florence, and will you stay me with flagons in the old way?”

“There never was anything but tea, you know well enough.”

“The tea had rum in it.”

“Well, perhaps it will have rum in it here, if you’re very good.”

“I will try my best, on condition that you’ll make any and every possible use of me.  Mrs. Vostrand, I can’t tell you how very glad I am you’re going to stay,” said the painter, with a fervor that made her impulsively put out her hand to him.  He kept it while he could add, “I don’t forget—­I can never forget—­how good you were to me in those days,” and at that she gave his hand a quick pressure.  “If I can do anything at all for you, you will let me, won’t you.  I’m afraid you’ll be so well provided for that there won’t be anything.  Ask them to slight you, to misuse you in something, so that I can come to your rescue.”

“Yes, I will,” Mrs. Vostrand promised.  “And may we come to your studio to implore your protection?”

“The sooner the better.”  Westover got himself away with a very sweet friendship in his heart for this rather anomalous lady, who, more than half her daughter’s life, had lived away from her daughter’s father, upon apparently perfectly good terms with him, and so discreetly and self-respectfully that no breath of reproach had touched her.  Until now, however, her position had not really concerned Westover, and it would not have concerned him now, if it had not been for a design that formed itself in his mind as soon as he knew that Mrs. Vostrand meant to pass the winter in Boston.  He felt at once that he could not do things by halves for a woman who had once done them for him by wholes and something over, and he had instantly decided that he must not only be very pleasant to her himself, but he must get his friends to be pleasant, too.  His friends were some of the nicest people in Boston; nice in both the personal and the social sense; he knew they would not hesitate to sacrifice themselves for him in a good cause, and that made him all the more anxious that the cause should be good beyond question.

Since his last return from Paris he had been rather a fad as a teacher, and his class had been kept quite strictly to the ladies who got it up and to such as they chose to let enter it.  These were not all chosen for wealth or family; there were some whose gifts gave the class distinction, and the ladies were glad to have them.  It would be easy to explain Mrs. Vostrand to these, but the others might be more difficult; they might have their anxieties, and Westover meant to ask the leader of the class to help him receive at the studio tea he had at once imagined for the Vostrands, and that would make her doubly responsible.