CHAPTER XVI
LEAVING ROME
"I AM sorry, Jean, that you think no one could care for me for myself, and that it is my money that is my sole attraction. If that is true I could wish for my own part that the Rainbow mine had never been discovered."
The two cousins, Jack and Jean, were alone in their sitting room in their hotel in Rome. It was about four o'clock in the afternoon, six days after the Princess' ball, and although it was raining and a cold, disagreeable afternoon, Ruth, Olive and Frieda had gone forth on another sight-seeing pilgrimage.
Jack had been writing letters, but had ceased and gone over to stand by the window when Jean began her conversation. There was just a chance that it might be wiser for her cousin not to be able to see her face, for she was quicker to arrive at conclusions than any other one of them.
But Jean had said more than Jack supposed she would have dared. Now she turned from pretending to view the dismal picture of chilly orange trees and chillier marble statuary and her gray eyes met Jean's brown ones coldly.
Jean sighed. Somehow she and Jack had so often managed to misunderstand each other, ever since they were little girls. And now, when she particularly wanted to keep her cousin from growing angry and to talk things over candidly, why, as usual, she had begun matters by putting her foot in it. Jack had such an uncomfortable fashion of growing white and quiet when she was furious, instead of crimson and teary like Jean and Frieda. Why on earth had Ruth ever appointed her to tell Jack Frank Kent's account of his cousin and to find out whether she cared for him. It was certainly Ruth's place to have done it herself. Why in the world hadn't she had the sense to decline.
"But I never said anything in the least like that, Jack, and it is not fair of you to suggest it," Jean replied, doing her best to answer as gently as possible. "It was only that I told you we had good reason to believe that Captain Madden is a fortune-hunter. I don't know, of course, whether you care in the least who or what he is, but he is desperately poor, has had to resign from the British army because he didn't or couldn't pay his debts, and, and—do you care to hear anything else?"
Jack's eyes flashed curiously. Jean remembered how ever since she was a little girl her cousin's eyes had had this fashion of turning dark when any one opposed her will. And they had all thought Jack so entirely changed by her illness, so much softened, so much readier to give up her own way to other people's. At this instant Jean wondered if any one ever really changed in the leading traits of character?