“I think he was hurt, mamma,” the girl explained to her mother, “that you’ve never had him to anything.  I suppose they must feel it.”

“Oh, well, send him a card, then,” said her mother; and when Jeff got the card, rather near the eleventh hour, he made haste to accept, not because he cared to go to Mrs. Enderby’s house, but because he hoped he should meet Miss Lynde there.

Bessie was the first person he met after he turned from paying his duty to the hostess.  She was with her aunt, and she presented him, and promised him a dance, which she let him write on her card.  She sat out another dance with him, and he took her to supper.

To Westover, who had gone with the increasing forlornness a man feels in such pleasures after thirty-five, it seemed as if the two were in each other’s company the whole evening.  The impression was so strong with him that when Jeff restored Bessie to her aunt for the dance that was to be for some one else, and came back to the supper-room, the painter tried to satisfy a certain uneasiness by making talk with him.  But Jeff would not talk; he got away with a bottle of champagne, which he had captured, and a plate heaped with croquettes and pease, and galantine and salad.  There were no ladies left in the room by that time, and few young men; but the oldsters crowded the place, with their bald heads devoutly bowed over their victual, or their frosty mustaches bathed in their drink, singly or in groups; the noise of their talk and laughter mixed with the sound of their eating and drinking, and the clash of the knives and dishes.  Over their stooped shoulders and past their rounded stomachs Westover saw Alan Lynde vaguely making his way with a glass in his hand, and looking vaguely about for wine; he saw Jeff catch his wandering eye, and make offer of his bottle, and then saw Lynde, after a moment of haughty pause, unbend and accept it.  His thin face was flushed, and his hair tossed over his forehead, but Jeff seemed not to take note of that.  He laughed boisterously at something Lynde said, and kept filling his glass for him.  His own color remained clear and cool.  It was as if his powerful physique absorbed the wine before it could reach his brain.

Westover wanted to interfere, and so far as Jeff was concerned he would not have hesitated; but Lynde was concerned, too, and you cannot save such a man from himself without offence.  He made his way to the young man, hoping he might somehow have the courage he wanted.

Jeff held up the bottle, and called to him, “Get yourself a glass, Mr. Westover.”  He put on the air of a host, and would hardly be denied.  “Know Mr. Westover, Mr. Lynde?  Just talking about you,” he explained to Westover.

Alan had to look twice at the painter.  “Oh yes.  Mr. Durgin, here—­telling me about his place in the mountains.  Says you’ve been there.  Going—­going myself in the summer.  See his—­horses.”  He made pauses between his words as some people do when they, try to keep from stammering.