Westover tried to protest, to say something in derision or defiance; but he was shaken himself, and he ended by getting his hat and coat; Whitwell had kept his own on, in the excitement.  “We’ll go out and see a lawyer.  A friend of mine; it won’t cost you anything.”  He added this assurance at a certain look of reluctance that came into Whitwell’s face, and that left it as soon as he had spoken.  Whitwell glanced round the studio even cheerily.  “Who’d ha’ thought,” he said, fastening upon the study which Westover had made of Lion’s head the winter before, “that the old place would ‘a’ gone so soon?” He did not mean the mountain which he was looking at, but the hotel that was present to his mind’s eye; and Westover perceived as he had not before that to Whitwell the hotel and not the mountain was Lion’s Head.

He remembered to ask now where Whitwell had left his family, and Whitwell said that Frank and Cynthia were at home in his own house with Jombateeste; but he presumed he could not get back to them now before the next day.  He refused to be interested in any of the aspects of Boston which Westover casually pointed out, but when they had seen the lawyer he came forth a new man, vividly interested in everything.  The lawyer had been able to tell them that though the insurance companies would look sharply into the cause of the fire, there was no probability, hardly a possibility, that they would inculpate him, and he need give himself no anxiety about the affair.

“There’s one thing, though,” Whitwell said to Westover when they got out upon the street.  “Hadn’t I ought to let Jeff know?”

“Yes, at once.  You’d better cable him.  Have you got his address?”

Whitwell had it, and he tasted all the dramatic quality of sending word to Jeff, which he would receive in Florence an hour after it left Boston.  “I did hope I could ha’ cabled once to Jackson while he was gone,” he said, regretfully, “but, unless we can fix up a wire with the other world, I guess I shan’t ever do it now.  I suppose Jackson’s still hangin’ round Mars, some’res.”

He had a sectarian pride in the beauty of the Spiritual Temple which Westover walked him by on his way to see Trinity Church and the Fine Arts Museum, and he sorrowed that he could not attend a service’ there.  But he was consoled by the lunch which he had with Westover at a restaurant where it was served in courses.  “I presume this is what Jeff’s goin’ to give ’em at Lion’s Head when he gits it goin’ again.”

“How is it he’s in Florence?” it occurred to Westover to ask.  “I thought he was going to Nice for the winter.”

“I don’t know.  That’s the address he give in his last letter,” said Whitwell.  “I’ll be glad when I’ve done with him for good and all.  He’s all kinds of a devil.”

It was in Westover’s mind to say that he wished the Whitwells had never had anything to do with Durgin after his mother’s death.  He had felt it a want of delicacy in them that they had been willing to stay on in his employ, and his ideal of Cynthia had suffered a kind of wound from what must have been her decision in the matter.  He would have expected something altogether different from her pride, her self-respect.  But he now merely said:  “Yes, I shall be glad, too.  I’m afraid he’s a bad fellow.”