Then, as Jack opened her eyes for the second time, and sat straight up as though vexed with her own weakness, Frank had a sudden recollection of Olive's strange message to him when he had first started on his search.
"Tell her it has all been a dreadful mistake and that there is nothing in the whole world that will make me so happy as her engagement to you."
"What could Olive's words mean? Who had made a mistake? Had Jack been under some cruelly false impression?" Frank was utterly mystified. Yet he held out his hand. "Come, dear, we will walk for a few minutes," he said gently, "and I will lead the horse. You will feel less stiff and tired with a little exercise. See, the daylight has come. How beautiful and fragrant the world is!"
Some change in Frank's voice, or in his manner—the girl did not know or care to think what the change might mean—made her take the hand held out so quietly toward her and hold it close in her own cold fingers. How exquisitely she could always be at peace with Frank, how perfectly he understood things without having them explained to him! After all, he was not going to be angry with her because of her unreasonable and unkind behavior. She had felt his anger a little more than she was willing to endure in her present state of exhaustion.
So Jack looked overhead with more of her accustomed sparkle and animation than she had yet showed. The sky was a radiant rose color, so deeply pink that it cast its reflection on the ground at her feet. They were near a group of trees and the birds were beginning to waken one another with mild reproaches and then sudden bursts of eloquent song.
"Frank," Jack began pensively enough, "I never saw a more wonderful dawn. But do you happen to have anything in your pocket more substantial than beef tea? I have not had anything to eat since yesterday at noon and I think perhaps I am dying of hunger."
With a laugh her companion let go her hand, drawing a package from his pocket. "Ruth gave me this at midnight along with the beef tea, but I have not been interested enough to see what was in it," he explained.
Greedily Jack tore open the bundle and had devoured a large chicken sandwich before good manners even suggested her sharing the luncheon with its owner. Afterwards Frank also confessed to being hungry, and so they walked on toward the Lodge like happy, runaway children, almost safe at home again.
Yet while he talked and laughed and ate Frank Kent was not forgetting Olive's words nor her final injunction to him. "Please tell her what I say when you first find her. Don't wait too long," she had begged.
"Jack, dear," Frank began casually in the midst of something else they had been discussing, "there is something I want to ask your forgiveness for before another five minutes have passed. Because I don't think I can hold out much longer. Back there on horseback when you were nearly dead with fatigue I was angry with you and told you that I never meant to ask you to marry me again. That was the most untruthful speech a man ever made! Because if you are too tired to listen I may have to wait until you have rested a little while, but not any longer. You know you care for me, dear. You are not the kind of a girl who would deceive a man by your words or your manner after all these years of friendship! There is some mystery that is keeping you from showing me your real feelings. I can't guess what it is. Yet Olive must think so too, for she told me to tell you that you had been making a dreadful mistake about something or other, heaven only knows what! And that our engagement would make her happier than anything in the world."