“It’s my cousin Jack!”
“It is your—some one you know?” stammered Von Ibn. “Then I must demand a thousand pardons.”
“Not at all,” said Jack, taking his hand and shaking it heartily; “that’s all right! don’t say a word more. The trouble was that when I saw Rosina I forgot that she had gotten out of the habit of being kissed. Of course I scared her awfully. Are you over it yet, dear?”
Rosina stood between the two men, and appeared completely stunned by her cousin’s arrival.
“Where did you drop from, anyhow?” she asked, finding her tongue at last.
“Came over to go back with you; left Paris last night.”
“Where will you stay? There isn’t an empty corner in the pension, one has to write ever so long ahead.”
“I’m going to stay at the Vierjahreszeiten, just beside you. I’m all right.”
“Yes,” said Von Ibn suddenly, “you are very right; I stay there too.”
Rosina thought despairingly, “They’ll see a lot of one another, and Jack will dislike him and he’ll hate Jack.”