Colonel Douglas was surprised at the depth of feeling in her tone.
"Sometimes we misunderstand those who love us best," he said. "It isn't always the ones who are most demonstrative, who are the most genuine."
Jean smiled rather bitterly.
"Ask grandfather if he has the least liking for me, and hear what he says. Oh, Colonel Douglas, I am so lonely, so friendless! I can't help telling you, but do you know, you are the first person who has taken the smallest interest in me, since I left school. It is so good of you. I don't think I shall mind it when I take up painting, but here I have nothing to do, nothing to read, and I think of myself all day long, until I sometimes wish there was no such person in the world as Jean Desmond!"
She broke into a little laugh, and turned to pick some daffodils in a bed close by.
"Ah, well," Colonel Douglas said cheerily, "when your circle widens, and you know a few more people, you will become so interested in some of them, that you will almost forget your own existence."
"Do you think I shall?" she asked, looking up at him quickly. "Ah, you are laughing at me! Come indoors, will you? I see grandfather riding round to the stables."
She was silent at dinner-time, leaving the conversation entirely to her grandfather and his guest. But as she left the room, Colonel Douglas met her pleading glance with a reassuring nod, and Jean wandered about the empty drawing-room in a fever of unrest and anxious conjecture.
She did not see the Colonel again that evening, and her dreams that night were disturbed by visions of a battle royal waging between him and her grandfather.
But after breakfast the next morning, Mr. Desmond summoned her to the library, where she found Colonel Douglas engrossed in some old parchments and her grandfather looking very grim and determined.