"I—oh, I don't know anything about it. I am so surprised!" Jean stammered.
"Frank has asked me to talk to Jack, to find out if she would be wounded by his telling her of his love so soon after Captain Madden. But somehow, Jean," and here Olive's voice faltered, "I don't believe I know how to do it very well. Why, if I began poor Jack might think that I had believed Frank in love with me and was telling her this to prove to her I had no feeling for him. It would be like old Jack to get some such absurd fancy as that into her head. And then, of course, we both know that Jack would rather die than give poor Frank the slightest chance."
"But don't you care for Frank?" It was on the tip of Jean Bruce's tongue to ask Olive this question. Yet just in time she stopped it.
Never so long as she or any one else lived could this question be put to Olive Van Mater. By her own words and manner had she not chosen forever to silence it. And actually Jean herself did not know what to think. It was so easy in this world to receive a false impression.
"Would you like me to tell Jack then, Olive dear?" Jean queried, for her own sake keeping her eyes away from her friend's. "Of course I should not dare say anything about Frank's feelings. But I could kind of intimate what you have just told me."
Olive drew the cover a little closer about her. "You are awfully good, Jean. Yes, that will be best. Now, please, you won't mind if I ask you to leave me. And will you make my excuses to Lady Kent at dinner? My head really aches too severely for me to come down."
CHAPTER XXIII
THE WEDDING DAY