“What are you talking about, Jeff Durgin?” Cynthia demanded, severely.”  What would your mother do?  What would she do this winter?”

“That brings me to something, Cynthia,” said Jeff, “and I don’t want you to say anything till I’ve got through.  I guess I could help mother run the place as well as Jackson, and I could stay here next winter.”

“You?”

“Now, you let me talk!  My mind’s made up about one thing:  I’m not going to be a lawyer.  I don’t want to go back to Harvard.  I’m going to keep a hotel, and, if I don’t keep one here at Lion’s Head, I’m going to keep it somewhere else.”

“Have you told your mother?”

“Not yet:  I wanted to hear what you would say first.”

“I?  Oh, I haven’t got anything to do with it,” said Cynthia.

“Yes, you have!  You’ve got everything to do with it, if you’ll say one thing first.  Cynthia, you know how I feel about you.  It’s been so ever since we were boy and girl here.  I want you to promise to marry me.  Will you?”

The girl seemed neither surprised nor very greatly pleased; perhaps her pleasure had spent itself in that moment of triumphant expectation when she foresaw what was coming, or perhaps she was preoccupied in clearing the way in her own mind to a definite result.

“What do you say, Cynthia?” Jeff pursued, with more injury than misgiving in his voice at her delay in answering.  “Don’t you-care for me?”

“Oh yes, I presume I’ve always done that—­ever since we were boy and girl, as you say.  But——­”

“Well?” said Jeff, patiently, but not insecurely.

“Have you?”

“Have I what?”

“Always cared for me.”

He could not find his voice quite as promptly as before.  He cleared his throat before he asked:  “Has Mr. Westover been saying anything about me?”

“I don’t know what you mean, exactly; but I presume you do.”

“Well, then—­I always expected to tell you—­I did have a fancy for that girl, for Miss Vostrand, and I told her so.  It’s like something that never happened.  She wouldn’t have me.  That’s all.”

“And you expect me to take what she wouldn’t have?”

“If you like to call it that.  But I should call it taking a man that had been out of his head for a while, and had come to his senses again.”

“I don’t know as I should ever feel safe with a man that had been out of his head once.”

“You wouldn’t find many men that hadn’t,” said Jeff, with a laugh that was rather scornful of her ignorance.

“No, I presume not,” she sighed.  “She was beautiful, and I believe she was good, too.  She was very nice.  Perhaps I feel strangely about it.  But, if she hadn’t been so nice, I shouldn’t have been so willing that you should have cared for her.”

“I suppose I don’t understand,” said Jeff, “but I know I was hard hit.  What’s the use?  It’s over.  She’s married.  I can’t go back and unlive it all.  But if you want time to think—­of course you do—­I’ve taken time enough—­”