However, without speaking, Jean went on quietly undressing. Then, when she had finished, she too got into a kimona and piled her grate high with fresh logs. The next moment she had placed herself on another cushion by the side of her unexpected visitor.
But Jean asked no questions.
"I hope you are not very sleepy, dear," Jacqueline remarked finally. "Of course you know that I wouldn't have disturbed you at such an unholy hour except that there was something important I felt I must talk to you about."
"It isn't—" Jean began. But to her intense relief Jack immediately shook her head.
"No, it isn't and never will be again. And the sooner that all of my family forget my miserable mistake, the happier you will make me. It is something different and yet it is such a kind of intimate, personal thing, I can't decide whether I have the right to mention it even to you."
"Ruth and Jim?" the other girl queried. For the second time Jack demurred.
"No." But she kept on gazing at the fire rather than at her confidante.
"See here, Jean," she inquired suddenly. "I wonder if it has ever occurred to you that Frank Kent cared, well, cared more than just an ordinary lot for Olive? Perhaps it does not seem exactly square of me to be prying into Frank's and Olive's feelings for each other, but on my honor I have a real reason for wishing to know."
Jean's big brown eyes opened wide with amazement. Was there any question in the world farther from her imagination than this unexpected one?
Notwithstanding, Jean gave the subject a few moments of serious consideration. "No," she replied at length, "I have been thinking over all the time I can recall from Olive's and Frank's first acquaintance with each other. And I don't remember a single occasion when he seemed more than just a good friend of hers. To tell you the truth, Jack, I personally should never have dreamed of Frank's being in love with Olive in a thousand years! Whatever put it into your mind? Why you and Frank, after you got over your first prejudice against his being the guest of our old enemies, the Nortons, were much more intimate than the rest of us. I always took it as a matter of course that he liked you best until you had that quarrel in Rome. Lately, though, you seem to have made up."