"But seriously! I have had the offer."
"You don't think of accepting it!"
"Yes." Jem was smiling.
Jean showed no pleasure. She asked abruptly, "Do you mean it?"
"Why not? The one living is nearly seven hundred a year; the other is not two hundred. What do you think?"
"It doesn't matter what people think . . . I would rather not give any opinion. One person can't judge for another . . . It is not my business;" as he waited still. "Everybody will like to have you at Dutton—of course; How soon do we get to Richmond?"
"Suppose you answer my question first?"
"I can't. There's nothing to answer. What a horrible jangle!" as two or three discordant instruments struck up on deck. "No use to talk against such a noise."
Jem acquiesced, and they sank into silence; Jean turning away a troubled face. Jem had suddenly dropped from a high pedestal in her imagination; and how high the pedestal had been, whereon he was wont to sit, Jean had never known till now. She was vexed at the strength of her own pain and displeasure. That Jem should so fail—! Anybody else except Jem!
Oswald always pleased himself by following the easy path of what he liked; and nobody ever expected Oswald to do anything else; but Jem—why, she had always looked upon him as the living embodiment of self-denial; and here was he, just like any commonplace man, snatching at personal advantage the moment it offered itself, forsaking the post of toil and difficulty, for which he had seemed especially fitted, and for which he had professed an ardent love. Jean wrung her gloved fingers together, and could almost have wept in girlish disappointment at this dethroning of her hero—if she had been alone.