“Thank you,” said Westover, with as much stiffness as he could command in his physical limpness. “I shouldn't have allowed you to look after me; and I want you to understand, now, that there can't be any sort of friendliness between us till you've accounted for your behavior with Lynde the other night.”
“You mean at the party?” Jeff asked, tranquilly.
“Yes!” cried Westover. “If I had not been shut up ever since, I should have gone to see you and had it out with you. I've only let you in, now, to give you the chance to explain; and I refuse to hear a word from you till you do.” Westover did not think that this was very forcible, and he was not much surprised that it made Jeff smile.
“Why, I don't know what there is to explain. I suppose you think I got him drunk; I know what you thought that night. But he was pretty well loaded when he struck my champagne. It wasn't a question of what he was going to do any longer, but how he was going to do it. I kept an eye on him, and at the right time I helped the caterer's man to get him up into that room where he wouldn't make any trouble. I expected to go back and look after him, but I forgot him.”
“I don't suppose, really, that you're aware what a devil's argument that is,” said Westover. “You got Lynde drunk, and then you went back to his sister, and allowed her to treat you as if you were a gentleman, and didn't deserve to be thrown out of the house.” This at last was something like what Westover had imagined he would say to Jeff, and he looked to see it have the imagined effect upon him.
“Do you suppose,” asked Jeff, with cheerful cynicism, “that it was the first time she was civil to a man her brother got drunk with?”
“No! But all the more you ought to have considered her helplessness. It ought to have made her the more sacred”—Jeff gave an exasperating shrug—“to you, and you ought to have kept away from her for decency's sake.”
“I was engaged to dance with her.”
“I can't allow you to be trivial with me, Durgin,” said Westover. “You've acted like a blackguard, and worse, if there is anything worse.”
Jeff stood at a corner of the fire, leaning one elbow on the mantel, and he now looked thoughtfully down on Westover, who had sunk weakly into a chair before the hearth. “I don't deny it from your point of view, Mr. Westover,” he said, without the least resentment in his tone. “You believe that everything is done from a purpose, or that a thing is intended because it's done. But I see that most things in this world are not thought about, and not intended. They happen, just as much as the other things that we call accidents.”