The Ranch Girls at Home Again Part 16

"Your people will see enough of me, Frank, before very long," she answered. "How glad I am that they already know me and that they do not object very seriously to our marriage! Of course they must have preferred your caring for one of your own countrywomen, but----"

"You would have married me anyhow, wouldn't you, dear, even if they _had_ objected?" Frank asked and then laughed at himself. "That's a dreadfully unfilial speech, but I expect every man likes to feel that the girl he cares for would have stuck to him through every kind of obstacle--poverty, obscurity, the world's misunderstanding. Not that I have much doubt of you, Jack. You are giving up more than most people realize in turning your back on the dear old ranch and your beloved family. But we'll come back as often as possible and have them come to us, and after a while Ruth must let Frieda be with you for a year or so.

She is my little sister, and honestly I don't quite like her intimacy with this fellow, Russell--he is much too cranky and old." Frank had taken Jack's hand and was touching it to his lips when she made a quick though silent signal. She and Frank were sitting in the bay window almost hidden by evergreens and at this moment Ruth and Jim, the other three girls and their guests were entering the ball room.

Olive wore a yellow crepe dress and carried the yellow roses. Jean was in deep pink, her costume of shimmering satin and lace, and had one of Frank's flowers in her dark brown hair. Her bouquet was not the same that it had been two hours before, when she had first removed it from its wrappings; for now encircled by Frank's roses were a dozen purple orchids.

"Do you think, Frank, that Jean intends--" Jack whispered softly, inclining her head toward her cousin to indicate what she meant to say.

Then when her companion made no reply, fearing to be overheard, she continued. "It is Jean I am most worried about. How can she make up her mind to marry a foreigner instead of an American? Just look at the Prince and then at Jim or Ralph Merrit. He is so little and so dark and so kind of different. Even that scar on his face from a duel he once fought makes me have almost a dislike for him, though I know it is foolish of me."

"But Jean isn't really going to marry him!" Frank protested.

This time Jack nodded uneasily. "I am afraid so; indeed she almost told me that she intended to accept him; and I suppose she means to do it this evening. I wish I could have said something to influence her, but I did not dare. Besides, it would have done no good. You know Jean might have said that I too was marrying a foreigner and had no right to say anything to her. Only the difference is that Jean does not love Giovanni--and then an Englishman isn't the same and--"

Frank was now smiling over Jack's effort at an apology and explanation.

She had slipped her hand into his and was holding it fast. At this moment a splendidly handsome figure marched across the floor with surprising swiftness and now stood looking down upon the girl and man with an expression that was a combination of wrath, sympathy and devotion.

"Jacqueline Ralston," Jim began so unexpectedly that to save her life Jack could not restrain a guilty start, "have I not told you and Frank Kent at least a dozen times that I would not have any stealing off by yourselves or any spooning until you were safely away from the Rainbow Ranch? It is bad enough, Kent, when I think of your taking my 'partner'

from me and leaving me to look after this great place without her. But I tell you I can't stand _looking_ at you doing it."

And Jim gave a mournful sigh that was part pretense and part reality.

Its effect was to make Jack at once jump to her feet and throw her arms about him, regardless of his immaculate shirt. Then she ran for protection to Ruth.

Happiness had made Ruth grow a year younger each month, her husband had stoutly declared, and though this statement was not strictly true, she did look very little older than the four Ranch girls as she stood waiting to receive their guests tonight. For the girls and Jim had insisted that she discard her nun-like fondness for gray and drab colors at least for this one evening and wear white. So Ruth's costume of heavy white corded silk with silver tr.i.m.m.i.n.g was both youthful and becoming.

On one side of the hostess stood Miss Katherine Winthrop, looking singularly handsome and imposing in a gray satin evening gown trimmed with d.u.c.h.ess lace and with a bunch of Frieda's violets at her waist.

Olive was next in line, and then Jean, while on Ruth's other side the Princess Colonna was made more radiantly fair by a wonderful black gown and a diamond star in her hair. Jack stood beside her, and then Frieda.

The Princess seemed far more at ease and better able to appreciate and make herself popular with the hundred or more visitors than Miss Winthrop. For the Princess appeared almost to have forgotten, for the time at least, the years spent in the formal society of Rome and to be remembering only her own early girlhood in this same western country. A large number of the guests were traveled and cultured persons, the owners of large ranches and estates; but Jim had asked that all of their old acquaintances be invited regardless of wealth and position, so that there were many interesting figures who appeared as "western types" to Miss Winthrop, but whom the Princess immediately understood and enjoyed.

Indeed during the evening Jim Colter, who had never liked the Princess Colonna nor felt entirely comfortable in her presence, confided to Ralph Merrit that maybe a Princess could after all be a real live woman, though he hoped to the Lord that Jean Bruce was not going to undertake the job. Ralph had little comfort to offer either to Jim or to himself in return for this confidence. For everybody in the ball room who had heard the gossip concerning Jean and the young Prince had no doubt of its ultimate outcome. And naturally they marveled over two of the Rainbow Ranch girls making such distinguished marriages.

Perhaps Jean was not altogether displeased with this gossip, for she certainly danced with the young Prince most of the earlier part of the evening. The exact number of her dances Ralph Merrit could have told, although he was not conscious of having counted them. For except for dancing once with each one of the four Ranch girls and once with Ruth, he had spent the rest of the evening watching the dancers from a safe corner. For some reason or other he seemed not to feel sufficient energy for anything else.

It was a few moments after eleven o'clock that same evening when the Princess Colonna, feeling a hand laid lightly on her arm and turning, discovered Jean Bruce alone. The girl seemed to have grown suddenly tired and pale.

Fortunately the older woman's companion suggested at this moment that she might like him to get her an ice, so that she and Jean were uninterrupted for a moment.

"I wonder if you could come somewhere with me for a little while, where we could talk without any one else seeing us?" Jean pleaded. "I know you will think it strange of me, Princess, but all of a sudden it seemed to me that you were the only person in the world whom I could ask a certain question. And I must ask it of you before another hour has pa.s.sed."

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 t.i.tle 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 t.i.tle 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 t.i.tle 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 pa.s.sed 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 t.i.tles 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.

"Isn't there any one here in your own country, Jean, whom you like better than you do Giovanni, whom you would a great deal rather marry if he had the same position to offer?" she inquired.

For a moment the girl made no answer. Then she said faintly: "Yes, Princess, there is, though I have never confessed it to anybody in the world except you, and scarcely to myself. For you see it is not only the other man's lack of money and position that comes between us, but Ralph does not even care for me. Some time ago he did, I think, but I was not very kind to him then, and now for months and months he has been nothing more to me than a friend. So I can see that his feelings have changed entirely. I thought if I went away with Giovanni I too would forget. It is hard to be right here on the ranch and have to pretend and pretend all the time that I feel toward him just as I used to when I was a little girl."

"Jean," the older woman's voice had quite changed and was now both cold and stern, "I wonder what kind of a partnership you think marriage is?

Do you think that when men go into business together that one brings everything to the firm and the other nothing? For that is what you wish to do with Giovanni. You must play fair, child. Why do you consider that an Italian is different from other men? Giovanni is young; he is not unattractive. Unless you loved him, you would soon learn to hate each other. For his sake if not for yours I could never approve of your marriage."

But before Jean could reply the Princess had laid a restraining touch upon her. "Some one is coming toward us--a stranger, I think. We had best talk of this another time."

CHAPTER XXII

OLD FRIENDS AND SOMETHING MORE

JEAN did not recognize the newcomer at once. Then she held out her hand, trying to speak naturally.

"Mr. Parker, I am so glad to see you. I was afraid you were not coming back at all. Princess, Mr. Parker built our new house. Mr. Parker, this is our friend and guest, the Princess Colonna."

The tall man bowed politely. "I was told to bring you and the Princess Colonna back to the ball room if you would consent to come," he returned.

From out of the shadow the slender, blond woman rose quietly, taking a few steps forward. "I shall be most happy to go back with you, Mr.

Parker," she replied. And then standing within a few feet of her new acquaintance she stared at him curiously.

"Theodore Parker, it isn't fair of you after all these years to have me recognize you when you have forgotten me. It makes me think that I must look a great deal the older!"

But with a laugh the woman held out both hands, and now standing in the light that fell from a yellow shaded lantern the Princess' face and figure were in plain view.

"Beatrice, the Princess Colonna! Why of course I have known your name always. How stupid of me not to have thought! But I could never have dreamed of meeting you out here in Wyoming. The Prince, your husband?"

"He is dead," the woman answered. And then turning to Jean: "It is odd, dear, but Mr. Parker and I have known each other a very long time. It gives me great happiness to see him again and makes me think of that girl I have been telling you about. Won't you come back to Mrs. Colter with us?"

But Jean shook her head and the man and woman moved away, leaving her alone.

It was in this same place that Ralph Merrit, also trying to steal away from the guests, found her ten minutes later.