"Olive dear," Jack began abruptly, not looking at her friend, but at a small smoke-colored cloud over in the western sky, "I know you are angry with me about Carlos and I am sorry. He was impertinent, but I don't suppose you would think that justifies what I did. But it is not about what happened just now that I want to talk. You have not felt like you once did for me for several weeks—not since Frank Kent came to the Lodge. Would you mind telling me why?"
To Jack's directness of thought and speech her friend by this time should have grown accustomed. And indeed until now Olive had always loved and admired Jack for it. But today she was tired and her head ached and this unexpected question had taken her completely by surprise. The girl's dark cheeks flushed richly and her ordinarily gentle expression changed.
"Jack, you are absurd!" she answered irritably. "What right have you anyhow to consider that my feeling for you has any connection with Frank Kent? What does Frank mean to me?"
Now if only Jack had been content with this answer or had possessed some of Jean Bruce's tact and resourcefulness! She had neither. So her gray eyes darkened and her face grew white and unhappy.
"Forgive me, Olive," she murmured, humbly enough for proud, high-tempered Jack, "but that is what I, oh, so much want you to tell me. For sometimes I have thought that perhaps you do like Frank just a little bit more than an ordinary friend. And if it is true, dear, don't you feel that we have been close enough to each other to have you make me your confidant?"
It was very gently put, after all, and therefore Olive should not have been so wounded or so angry. However, and perhaps because there was so much of truth in the other girl's suggestion, Olive was both hurt and embittered.
"You have not the shadow of a right, Jacqueline Ralston, to say a thing like that to me," she returned with the passion and protest of a too sensitive nature. "How dare you sit there and calmly suggest to me that I am in love with Frank Kent when you know perfectly well that he cares for no one in this world but you. Do you suppose that I have no pride and no self-respect?"
And then, dropping her head in her hands, Olive began crying, hardly understanding her own tears, so much were they a combination of pain and of petulance. For the questions she had just put to Jack were the very ones that she had so often asked herself. And if she had found no answer to them, how could any one else?
But Jack did not attempt making a reply. For a moment she was silent, feeling miserably conscious of the failure she had just made. For had she not merely succeeded in mortifying her friend without arriving one bit nearer the truth which she sought?
But by and by Jack laid her hand caressingly on the other girl's dark hair. "Don't cry, Olive please," she begged. "You know what a stupid person I am and how often Jean and Frieda think I do and say the wrong thing. Here comes Carlos and when he has eaten his lunch you must let him take you back to the Lodge. You are too tired to ride any farther and I can manage very well by myself, or else you can send one of the stable boys this way to find me."