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 easily.  The thought of Cynthia had always intruded more or less effectively between them, but now that this thought began to fade into the past, the thought of Bessie began to grow out of it with no interposing shadow.

However, Jeff was in no hurry.  It was not passion that moved him, and the mood in which he could play with the notion of getting back to his flirtation with Bessie Lynde was pleasanter after the violence of recent events than any renewal of strong sensations could be.  He preferred to loiter in this mood, and he was meantime much more comfortable than he had been for a great while.  He was rid of the disagreeable sense of disloyalty to Cynthia, and he was rid of the stress of living up to her conscience in various ways.  He was rid of Bessie Lynde, too, and of the trouble of forecasting and discounting her caprices.  His thought turned at times with a soft regret to hopes, disappointments, experiences connected with neither, and now tinged with a tender melancholy, unalloyed by shame or remorse.  As he drew nearer to Class Day he had a somewhat keener compunction for Cynthia and the hopes he had encouraged her to build and had then dashed.  But he was coming more and more to regard it all as fatality; and if the chance that he counted upon to bring him and Bessie together again had occurred he could have more easily forgiven himself.