Jean spoke quietly and with entire self-possession; yet there was no doubting the girl's earnestness or her necessity.
Instantly the Princess slipped her arm through Jean's with the affectionate intimacy which she had always felt for her and the woman and girl together left the room. Providentially for their opportunity to be alone, the greater number of guests were now in the supper room. So without much effort Jean found two chairs at the end of a long veranda which had been enclosed for the evening's use and made into a kind of conservatory. There they appeared to be quite free from interruption.
The older woman sat in the shadow, but could see the girl's face plainly. And though she could hardly guess what question Jean might wish to ask her, she was not altogether uncertain of the subject uppermost in the girl's thoughts, so thoroughly had her nephew taken her into his confidence.
"Princess," Jean began, but she was not looking at her friend. Her eyes were seeing nothing, she was so deeply engrossed. "I wonder if you will tell me if you were happy in your married life? Oh, yes, I know that sounds like an impertinence; but I do not believe that you will think of it in that light. You understand I would ask you for no such reason. The Prince was a great deal older than you, but then you were very good friends and you had a splendid title and people everywhere looked up to you and were proud to meet you. I remember how dreadfully impressed we girls were when we first saw you on board the steamship. It did not seem to us then that a Princess could be like other people. And none of us ever dreamed of knowing you as an intimate friend. Those days when I was visiting you in Rome it seemed so wonderful to me that you, an American woman and a western girl like me, could be a leader in European society!" Jean drew a long breath. "Of course it never occurred to me then that any such chance could ever come to me. It sounds like a fairy tale and yet my own family don't understand how I can care so much for position and a title and all that it must mean."
"I understand," the Princess finally replied when Jean had given her opportunity to speak, "but there is one thing or at least one person whom you have not mentioned, my nephew, Giovanni. Do you care for him, Jean?"
In answer the girl, whose clear pallor was one of her noticeable characteristics, flushed hotly. "I like him very much, he is most kind, he——"
"You mean that Giovanni is entirely devoted to you and that you regard him as a friend. I see," the Princess finished softly. "And you think that after you marry him you will learn to care more for him because you would most enjoy his title and all it could do for you. I wonder just what Giovanni would receive in exchange for all he has to give?"
For a moment the older woman took the girl's cold fingers in her own.
"I don't mean to hurt your feelings, dear, or to seem unkind. But you have asked me to talk to you tonight because you believe that better than any one else I can understand and appreciate your ambition and your emotions. And you are entirely right. I know just what you are thinking, just what you have been saying to yourself over and over ever since I asked your guardian to permit you to marry my nephew. I know because I have passed through almost exactly the same experience. So I am going to talk frankly about my marriage to you tonight, Jean, though I never have and probably never will again to any one else as long as I live. You see, I, too, was a Western girl, only I was a great deal poorer in the beginning of my life than you have ever been. And then my father and mother were plainer people. But one day when I was about twelve years old my father began making a great fortune, and when I was fourteen, as is the way in this western country, he was many times a millionaire. In those days the West was not what it is now, so as my mother was ambitious for me and believed I was going to be a pretty woman I was sent East to school. Later on I went to Paris and studied there, and then to Italy, so that I might learn several languages. Now and then I used to see my father and mother, but not often. They did not enjoy Europe and I seemed to have so much to learn there was little time to stay at home. One or two wonderful summers I spent here in the West with them, loving this country and its people almost as your cousin Jack does. But by and by, when I was traveling in Italy with some rich American friends, I met the Prince Colonna. He asked me to marry him and I—well, I thought about things pretty much as you are doing, dear. I wanted to be a Princess; I thought it the most romantic, wonderful fate possible for a plain American girl with nothing but some prettiness and her money to exchange for fairyland. True, my Prince was old, but I liked him and I thought we would be better friends after we married. I believe we were. But, dear, I was not happy. I have missed the most wonderful thing that can come into one's life, for by and by I found that the people with titles were nothing but ordinary human beings. The people who count most, or at least who count most to me, are the people who do things for themselves, who have made their own way and their own positions, like so many of our big American men. Often I was very lonely and sad and often sorry for a decision I made years ago when I was even younger than you are tonight."
The Princess let go Jean's hand which she had been holding.