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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ranch Girls and Their Great Adventure, by 
+Margaret Vandercook
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Ranch Girls and Their Great Adventure
+
+Author: Margaret Vandercook
+
+Illustrator: Wilson V. Chambers
+
+Release Date: January 12, 2011 [EBook #34927]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RANCH GIRLS GREAT ADVENTURE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Emmy and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE RANCH GIRLS SERIES
+
+The Ranch Girls and Their Great Adventure
+
+
+
+
+BOOKS BY MARGARET VANDERCOOK
+
+
+THE RANCH GIRLS SERIES
+
+          THE RANCH GIRLS AT RAINBOW LODGE
+          THE RANCH GIRLS' POT OF GOLD
+          THE RANCH GIRLS AT BOARDING SCHOOL
+          THE RANCH GIRLS IN EUROPE
+          THE RANCH GIRLS AT HOME AGAIN
+          THE RANCH GIRLS AND THEIR GREAT ADVENTURE
+
+
+THE RED CROSS GIRLS SERIES
+
+          THE RED CROSS GIRLS IN THE BRITISH TRENCHES
+          THE RED CROSS GIRLS ON THE FRENCH FIRING LINE
+          THE RED CROSS GIRLS IN BELGIUM
+          THE RED CROSS GIRLS WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY
+          THE RED CROSS GIRLS WITH THE ITALIAN ARMY
+          THE RED CROSS GIRLS UNDER THE STARS AND STRIPES
+
+
+STORIES ABOUT CAMP FIRE GIRLS
+
+          THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS AT SUNRISE HILL
+          THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS AMID THE SNOWS
+          THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS IN THE OUTSIDE WORLD
+          THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS ACROSS THE SEA
+          THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS' CAREERS
+          THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS IN AFTER YEARS
+          THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS IN THE DESERT
+          THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS AT THE END OF THE TRAIL
+
+[Illustration: YOU MUST ABIDE BY MY DECISION]
+
+
+
+
+THE RANCH GIRLS SERIES
+
+
+The Ranch Girls and Their Great Adventure
+
+
+  --BY--
+  MARGARET VANDERCOOK
+
+          ILLUSTRATED BY
+          WILSON V. CHAMBERS
+
+
+          THE JOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY
+          PHILADELPHIA
+
+
+
+
+          Copyright, 1917, by
+          THE JOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+    CHAPTER                                PAGE
+         I. KENT HOUSE                        9
+        II. FRIEDA'S RIFT                    22
+       III. THE VOICE                        34
+        IV. A LATE ARRIVAL                   49
+         V. AN APPARITION                    63
+        VI. THE CLOUD                        81
+       VII. SO AS BY FIRE                    92
+      VIII. SEVERAL MONTHS LATER            101
+        IX. CHURCH AND STATE                116
+         X. THE LETTER                      127
+        XI. A SURPRISE                      138
+       XII. NO QUARTER                      148
+      XIII. THE BREAK                       159
+       XIV. PROFESSOR AND PROFESSORESS      171
+        XV. THE OLD RANCH                   187
+       XVI. VIVE                            201
+      XVII. FAREWELL                        212
+     XVIII. "UNDER TWO FLAGS"               225
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  YOU MUST ABIDE BY MY DECISION           _Frontispiece_
+                                                    PAGE
+  IN A FEW MOMENTS SHE WAS IN A PANIC                 74
+  HIS OWN MEN CARRIED HIM BACK TO A FIELD HOSPITAL   128
+  I ASSURE YOU I HAVE OFFICIAL PERMISSION            180
+
+
+
+
+The Ranch Girls and Their Great Adventure
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+KENT HOUSE
+
+
+THE deep-rutted English lane was bordered with high box hedges. On one
+side was a sloping park with trees a century old and on the other side a
+wide field filled with meadow grass and scarlet poppies. It was in July.
+
+"In all the world there is nothing so peaceful as this English country,
+is there? It is like another world when one first gets away from the
+turmoil of New York."
+
+The girl who said this was undoubtedly an American, both in her manner
+and appearance, although her dark hair and eyes and her deep-toned olive
+skin were almost Spanish in coloring.
+
+Her companion--in spite of the fact that her costume was a typical
+English walking one, a mixed brown tweed skirt, Norfolk jacket and high
+boots,--was equally an American. She smiled before replying.
+
+"I don't know that I agree with you, Olive. Of course that is what
+people from home always say. Jim Colter declares he is half asleep the
+entire time he is in England. But that is because Americans,
+particularly my beloved westerners, don't understand England and the
+English. Things are not always peaceful just because they are quiet. We
+think so because we are noisy. Frank says there was never more unrest."
+
+But at this Lady Kent, who a number of years ago was Jacqueline Ralston
+and one of the four Ranch girls at Rainbow Lodge, slipped her arm
+through her friend's, Olive Van Mater's.
+
+"But, Olive dear, for goodness sake don't let us talk politics the day
+after your arrival. It is so English. Sometimes I feel scarcely fitted
+to play the part of an English 'Lady,' now that Frank has come into the
+title of 'Lord' and is a member of Parliament. I often long for a ride
+with Jim over my own prairies to search for lost cattle." Lady Kent
+laughed.
+
+"Once a Ranch girl, always a Ranch girl, so far as I'm concerned, Olive;
+and yet I'm farther away from the old place than any of you. But, tell
+me, what made you decide to come abroad so suddenly without even
+writing? I have had letters from everybody at home except that lazy
+Frieda, and yet not one with a suggestion of your trip in it. Tell me
+about every member of my family--Ruth and Jim and their babies and Jean
+and Ralph and Frieda and her Professor. Funny, I never can think of
+Frieda really being married. You see, although it has been nearly four
+years, I have never seen her since we went over for the great event."
+
+Jack ceased talking for a moment, for she was still "Jack" to her own
+family and the friends who knew her intimately. Olive never had talked
+so much as the other Ranch girls, but now it occurred to Jack that she
+was asking a great many questions, without allowing an opportunity for
+them to be answered.
+
+Olive turned, apparently to glance through the opening in the hedge at
+the splendid mass of colour in the field.
+
+"Suppose we sit down a while, Jack," she suggested. "Remember, I haven't
+had the English habit of walking for a long time. You told me Frank's
+train would not get in from London for another hour."
+
+In spite of the fact that her tone was as casual as she knew how to make
+it, her companion understood at once.
+
+"You have come to tell me bad news, haven't you? and I never dreamed of
+it until this instant. You have been brave, Olive."
+
+In spite of her nervousness over having so suddenly guessed the reason
+for her friend's unexpected visit, Jack quietly looked about for a
+comfortable resting place, remembering that Olive had just had a long
+trip and was never so strong as the other Ranch girls.
+
+A few yards farther on a gate led into Kent Park.
+
+Lady Kent opened this and a moment or two later the two friends were
+seated under one of the great oak trees for which the Kent estate was
+famous--the estate now presided over by Jacqueline Ralston and the Frank
+Kent, whom we once knew as a guest at a neighboring ranch to the
+Ralstons' in Wyoming, but who were now Lord and Lady Kent of the county
+of Kent, England.
+
+"Don't be frightened, Jack; my news isn't so bad as you may think. At
+least I don't know just how bad it is," and Olive smiled and then
+frowned the next moment. "The truth of the matter is that Frieda Ralston
+Russell has left her Professor. I was out in Wyoming having a peaceful
+visit at Rainbow Ranch when I received a mysterious telegram from Frieda
+telling me to come to her at once in New York city--not in Chicago,
+where she was supposed to be safe with her Professor husband. Of course
+I went at once to her. In New York I found a yellow-haired and not so
+miserable Frieda, who calmly told me she had decided that marriage was a
+failure. I could not find out her special reasons for thinking so, but
+perhaps she will tell you more herself, Jack. She is coming to you on
+the next steamer, only she preferred my first breaking the news to you
+and Frank."
+
+Jack whistled, after a boyish fashion of her youth, which was not
+becoming to her present age and position.
+
+"And you came, Olive dear, all the way across the ocean by yourself,
+just because my spoiled small sister wished to save herself the trouble
+of a confession? You are an angel, Olive. And I am afraid it is Frieda's
+selfishness--her remaining such a completely spoiled young person--that
+may be the answer to her present behavior. But I thought her husband
+spoiled her more even than her own family had in the past. Besides, I
+can't imagine the Professor doing anything wicked, can you, Olive? Oh
+dear, Frank and I always opposed Frieda's marriage. Professor Russell
+did seem too old and serious for her."
+
+Just as she had always done whenever it was possible as a girl, Lady
+Kent at this moment took off her hat and flung it on the ground beside
+her. It was of brown cloth with a small green and brown feather to match
+her walking outfit; nevertheless she looked far handsomer without it.
+
+Jack was no longer a girl. A good many years had passed since her
+marriage to Frank Kent, which was to occur soon after the close of the
+last Ranch girls' book, known as "The Ranch Girls At Home Again." Also
+in the final chapter, when the family had lately moved into their new
+home, built on the ranch not far from the old Rainbow Lodge, where the
+Ranch girls had first lived, their cousin Jean Bruce's engagement had
+been announced to Ralph Merritt, an old friend and the Rainbow Mine
+engineer. Then, as a great surprise to her family, Frieda Ralston, the
+youngest of the Ranch girls, at that time only eighteen, had insisted
+upon her own engagement to Professor Charles Henry Russell, a Professor
+of dead languages at the University of Chicago and more than ten years
+her senior.
+
+"Oh, well, what is an old maid worth in a family if she is not to be
+made useful?" Olive answered. "But, of course, Jack, you understand I
+don't require a great deal of persuasion to come to you, and besides I
+was afraid if I did not come ahead, Frieda would not come at all. You
+are the only person who has any influence over her. If she goes back to
+the ranch, Ruth and Jean will only make such a fuss over her that she
+will become more and more convinced she has been badly treated. Jim, you
+know, never has approved of any of his Ranch girls being married,
+although he misses none of us as he does you."
+
+Jack rose. "I hope you are rested, Olive, as we must walk on if we are
+to arrive in time to meet Frank. Oh, dear, what a business marriage is!
+I suppose we could not expect all the Ranch girls to be successfully
+married, although it is odd for it to be Frieda who is in trouble. As
+for you, Olive, don't congratulate yourself too soon on being an old
+maid; you'll probably yield some day. I do wonder what has happened to
+little Frieda? Perhaps things are worse than we imagine."
+
+Olive shook her head.
+
+She was recalling an extremely pretty Frieda sitting up in bed at
+midnight at the hour of her arrival in New York city, with a blue silk
+dressing gown over her nightgown and a box of chocolates open on the
+table beside her, which she must have been eating before going to bed.
+
+It was true Frieda had cried a good deal when making her confession, and
+had insisted that she never intended to speak to her husband again. Why,
+Olive could not find out. She gathered that Frieda thought her husband
+unsympathetic and that their temperaments were too unlike for them ever,
+ever to understand each other. But the details of her love tragedy
+Frieda had declared she could tell only to her sister Jack.
+
+Now, as Olive studied her companion's face, she believed that Frieda had
+decided wisely. When they were the four Ranch girls, Jack, Jean, Olive
+and Frieda, they had always relied upon Jacqueline Ralston's judgment.
+Now, as a woman, she seemed even finer than she had been as a girl.
+Well, fortunately Jack's marriage seemed to have turned out ideally
+happy, although there were reasons why it might not. Jack had never been
+fond of society or a conventional life, had hated the indoors and the
+management of even so small and casual an establishment as they had at
+Rainbow Lodge before the coming of Ruth as governess to take the
+responsibility out of Jack's hands. Now Jack was not only mistress of a
+great home, but must play "Lady Bountiful" to an entire village, as well
+as to the people on the Kent estate, and she was really the most
+democratic person in the world.
+
+They were entering the adjoining village of Granchester now and Lady
+Kent had actually forgotten to put on her hat. Yet all the people they
+met along the little narrow streets bowed to her, as if she were not
+unpopular. Several times Jack stopped to inquire about sick babies and
+old ladies in the most approved fashion. However, Olive remembered that
+she had been great friends with all the cowboys on her own ranch and the
+adjoining ones in the old days, and was interested in their families,
+when they chanced to have them, which was not often. Nevertheless this
+new life of her friend's did seem extraordinarily different from her old
+life.
+
+Only once since Jack's marriage had Olive visited her and then only for
+a few weeks, when her mother-in-law was alive and Frank's sisters had
+not yet married. Therefore she had never really seen Frank and Jack
+alone.
+
+As they came to the little railroad station, covered with roses and
+surrounded by flower beds, Jack hastily put on her hat.
+
+"Gracious! why didn't you tell me to do that before, Olive?" she asked
+"I must have looked ridiculous. Frank would have been discouraged if he
+had seen me. After all, you see, Olive, Frank is an Englishman and fond
+of the proprieties. At least I don't think he minds so much himself, but
+he does not enjoy having the country people talk about me, especially
+now that we have come into the title."
+
+"But they don't criticize you, do they?" Olive demanded with a good deal
+of feeling.
+
+However, Lady Kent only laughed, "Not more than I deserve." And then
+forgetting what she had just said, she took off her hat for the second
+time to wave it boyishly at the approaching train.
+
+The next moment Frank Kent jumped out on the platform. He had changed
+much more than his wife. Olive saw that he took his new position and his
+responsibilities seriously, for he had only come into the title two
+years before. He looked far more like what one feels to be the typical
+Englishman, as he had an air of distinction and of firmness. Indeed,
+Olive thought he had almost a hardness in the lower part of his face
+which had not been there as a younger man. But he greeted her with the
+same old cordiality and friendliness.
+
+"You and I seem often to meet Frank at railroad stations, Olive," Jack
+remarked. "Remember when he last came to Wyoming before we were married
+and we went together to meet him?"
+
+Frank appeared so uncertain that Jack laughed.
+
+"Husbands haven't very good memories for the sentimental past."
+
+The next instant Frank protested.
+
+"Of course I remember and how badly you treated me, Jack, so that Olive
+had to come to my rescue." And then: "Did you drive over? Where is the
+trap?"
+
+Lady Kent shook her head. "No; Olive and I wanted a walk and it is much
+better for you. If you don't look out we shall both be growing as
+portly as a dowager duke and duchess."
+
+Jack was a few steps ahead so that both her friend and husband looked at
+her admiringly, Olive appreciating, however, that Frank would have
+preferred his own wish to be carried out in this matter.
+
+But it had always been a pleasure to see Jacqueline Ralston out-of-doors
+and it was no less so now. Although she now had two babies she had
+managed to keep as slender and erect as a girl--a most unusual
+characteristic in a woman.
+
+Jack was walking on ahead so freely and so unconscious of her own speed
+that the others had to hurry to catch up with her.
+
+When they finally joined one another, Frank slipped his arm through his
+wife's.
+
+"Oh, I have a piece of news for you, dear. I forgot to tell you. I had a
+cable from Frieda's husband telling me that he expected to sail for
+England in about ten days. He did not give his reason, nor mention
+Frieda's coming with him."
+
+"No," Lady Kent answered apparently in a state of abstraction, "I don't
+suppose he did." But at the moment she made no mention of the
+information Olive had brought her concerning Frieda.
+
+As they reached Kent House and were entering the broad hall, Jack said
+to her husband under her breath, so that Olive who was a little in
+advance of them, did not hear:
+
+"There is something else you have on your mind, isn't there, Frank--some
+news you have not yet told me?"
+
+Frank Kent nodded.
+
+"Yes, Jack, something so serious that I dare not speak of it even to
+you. Perhaps it will all blow over though, and I may be able to discuss
+the subject with you in a few days."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+FRIEDA'S RIFT
+
+
+"DID Frieda say on what ship she would sail? It is odd she does not
+cable."
+
+The two friends were coming down from the third floor of Kent House
+where the babies' nurseries were. Jack and Frank had two children--the
+oldest a small boy, something over three years old, and called Jimmie,
+in honor of Jim Colter, the Ranch Girls' guardian and the one-time
+overseer and now part owner of the Rainbow Ranch. The baby, who was only
+a year old, had been named for Olive Van Mater, who had never seen her
+until her present visit. But there would be no confusion of names, for
+almost immediately the small brother had rechristened his tiny sister
+with the charming little name "Vive," which was used for her always. And
+since Vive was the gayest and liveliest of babies, this name with its
+translated meaning, "Life" was supposed to be particularly appropriate.
+
+"No, Frieda did not say," Olive Van Mater returned. "But I presume she
+will cable in a day or so. Frieda will expect you to be in London to
+meet her. I am sure she will feel much aggrieved if you do not, but I
+think I won't come along, Jack, if I may stay with the babies."
+
+Lady Kent opened the door of a room.
+
+"Just as you like, Olive, only I hope Frieda will let me know in time.
+Frank is in London most of the week while Parliament is in session, and
+I'll have to ask him to make arrangements for us. The season is over, of
+course, but the hotels are filled with tourists. It has been a wonderful
+English summer. I don't think there were ever more travelers. Well,
+Frieda's rooms are at least ready for her. I hope she may enjoy having
+the same ones she had when she came over to visit the first year after
+Frank and I were married. I wonder if she ever thinks these days of how
+hard I tried to persuade her to believe she was too much of a baby to
+think of marrying so soon? We should never have allowed her to marry the
+first person who ever seriously asked her. Oh, I know Frieda thought she
+had already had a great deal of experience with her college boy
+admirers, particularly the one we used to call 'The Chocolate Drop
+Boy.'"
+
+In the meantime the two women had entered the apartment which was being
+reserved for the expected visitor. The two rooms--a sitting room and a
+bed room--were furnished in heavy, old fashioned English furniture
+upholstered in delicately faded blue damask. The walls were also of the
+same blue, while the panelings of the rooms were of English oak.
+
+Olive walked at once to a window in Frieda's sitting room.
+
+"I don't see how she can well help liking these rooms, besides this
+window offers one of the most perfect views in the entire house."
+
+Olive could see across the slope of the park down to a stream, which
+twisted its way along the base of the hill. Beyond were the tall towers
+of Granchester church and not far away the roofs of the houses which
+made up the village.
+
+Then, to the left, one could acquire a charming view of the beginning of
+the Kent gardens--the low, carefully trimmed borders and the masses of
+blooms, with a sun dial at the end of the center path.
+
+"Let us go into the garden for awhile, Jack," Olive suggested. "I think
+I enjoy it more in the morning than at any other time. Besides, I have
+been intending to ask if you suppose Frieda and her husband have
+informed each other that they are both sailing for England? It will be
+odd to have them meet each other here unless they do know."
+
+Jack shook her head. "I haven't any ideas on the subject, but Frank will
+have to see that Professor Russell stays in London until we find out
+from Frieda. Sorry, but I can't go outdoors with you till this
+afternoon. I've hundreds of things to do and have promised Frank to
+write some letters which I have been putting off."
+
+In return Olive said nothing, although, as she was walking about
+outdoors alone, she rather marveled at the change in her friend's life.
+As a girl Jacqueline Ralston's life had been entirely unordered; she had
+done each day, after the sun rose over her beloved prairies, whatever
+the day called her to do. Now, each of Jack's days seemed to follow an
+established routine. In the morning immediately after breakfast she saw
+her housekeeper; then she spent two hours with her babies, afterwards
+answering an immense amount of correspondence--and Jack had always hated
+letter writing more than any other task. In the afternoon she was
+supposed to be free for a few hours, and then there were guests to tea,
+or else Lady Kent was supposed to drive or motor over to make calls on
+her country neighbors.
+
+Of course such an existence with money and a high position might be
+regarded as ideal by most women. But Olive was puzzled, because that
+kind of a life did not appear suited to the girl she remembered.
+However, as Jack seemed happy, Olive concluded that she must have
+changed, as most girls do after marriage.
+
+This afternoon a number of friends had been asked to tea at Kent House
+in order to meet Olive. When they went down into the garden together,
+where tea was to be served, Olive felt that her decision of the morning
+had really been nearer the truth than she had then appreciated. Jack
+looked like one of the fairest types of society women. She was dressed
+in white--an exquisite embroidered material--and had on a big soft white
+garden hat, trimmed with deep toned pink roses. The soft, damp English
+air had kept her color as vivid as ever and given her yellow brown hair
+an even finer gloss.
+
+On their way to the tea table in the garden, Jack stopped to pick for
+her companion a bouquet of lavender primroses and anemones and stars of
+the mist--flowers ranging from violet to pure white--for Olive was
+wearing a pale grey chiffon, which blended perfectly with her pronounced
+oriental coloring.
+
+To the right of the garden, and a few yards from the flower beds, was a
+clump of trees. Because this July was warmer than is usual in England,
+Lady Kent had arranged to have tea here. There were small tables and
+chairs scattered about over the lawn, which was green as only an English
+lawn can be, but the tea table itself stood under the trees.
+
+Jack and Olive had hoped to have a talk before their guests arrived. But
+they had not been outdoors more than a few moments before their guests
+appeared, the Rector and his wife, a Mr. and Mrs. Illington, and their
+two daughters,--charming, tall, blonde English girls. Afterwards, it
+seemed to Olive that Jack was constantly introducing her to people
+arriving every few minutes during the next hour, in spite of the fact
+that she had also to preside over the serving of the tea.
+
+As Olive had never entirely recovered from her girlhood shyness, she was
+delighted to see how perfectly at ease Jack was. She appeared to be able
+to discuss church matters with the Rector, and the latest bill up in
+Parliament with an old gentleman who was the Earl of Granchester and as
+a Conservative was much opposed to the Liberal party of which Frank Kent
+was a representative.
+
+Half an hour later, Olive wandered off with several of the guests to
+watch a game of tennis which was being started by the two Illington
+girls and two of their male friends who had come over to play.
+
+When Olive returned, she discovered that most of the other guests had
+either scattered or gone home. In any case Jack was alone, except for a
+young army officer, who must have just arrived, since Olive did not
+recall having previously seen him. He was a splendid looking fellow,
+about twenty-five, with dark hair and eyes, and a skin which must have
+been tanned by other than the English sun.
+
+As Olive approached them she thought he made a particularly handsome
+contrast to Jack's fairness. They were both laughing at the moment, but
+almost immediately Jack jumped up from the chair where she had been
+sitting and waved to Olive.
+
+"Olive, dear, come meet the nicest kind of an Englishman--one who is
+half Scotch and the other half Irish," she called out. "Olive Van
+Mater, this is Captain Bryan MacDonnell--an old school friend of Frank's
+and sometimes a friend of mine."
+
+Captain MacDonnell bowed gravely, making no effort to return Jack's
+challenge.
+
+"Bryan is just back from shooting 'big game' somewhere--make him tell
+you about it, Olive, while I get rid of the last of these tiresome
+people." Jack made a grimace and shrugged her shoulders, her manner more
+like her old self than Olive had noticed before.
+
+For about fifteen minutes she and Captain MacDonnell must have talked
+together, but Olive decided that Jack's description of him had been very
+nearly true, whether she had meant it or not. Then, observing that
+everybody else had gone and Jack was alone, they returned to her.
+
+"I'm sorry you can't dine with us tonight, Bryan," Lady Kent remarked on
+parting. "Olive and I are to be alone. Frank only visits his family now
+and then, because he is so busy in town. No; I did not go up to London
+this year for the season. I only went for a few days at a time, as I was
+not willing to leave the babies. Besides, you know I don't care as much
+for society as I should anyway."
+
+Then Captain MacDonnell said something which Olive did not hear.
+However, she did hear Jack's answer.
+
+"Ride with you tomorrow? I should think I will just as hard and as fast
+as possible and jump all the fences and ditches in this part of the
+country. I'm awfully glad you are back, Bryan, to help me get rid of
+some of my surplus American energy."
+
+That same evening, after a late dinner, Jack and Olive went into the
+library together. As is often the case in English homes of distinction,
+the library at Kent House was the pleasantest room in the entire house.
+The books were on low shelves encircling the four walls, except for the
+opening left for a huge fireplace. Above the mantel was the head of a
+stag. On one side hung a shield and on the other the Kent Coat of Arms
+with the motto "Semper Paratus" meaning "always prepared."
+
+Above the book shelves were portraits of Frank's ancestors, who had been
+country people in Kent county for a number of years, although the title
+was not an old one.
+
+In the places of honor were Frank's grandfather and grandmother--one of
+them a young man of about twenty in Court costume; the other a lovely
+girl with fair hair and dark eyes and a particularly bright expression.
+
+"Frank likes to think Vive, the baby, looks like his grandmother," Jack
+declared as she stretched herself on a big leather lounge not far from a
+pair of French windows, which opened on the veranda at the side of the
+house.
+
+"I hope you won't feel dull, Olive! As soon as Parliament closes, if you
+and Frieda like, we will have some people come to stay with us. I don't
+like the responsibility of visitors if Frank is not here. I have never
+learned to take guests so simply and easily as an English hostess does.
+It is one of the ways in which I am a social failure."
+
+"Nonsense," Olive announced, without paying much attention to what Jack
+had said. She had picked up a magazine and was reading.
+
+An hour passed and Olive believed that Jack had almost fallen asleep.
+Now and then she would close her eyes, although the greater part of the
+time she seemed in a reverie.
+
+As a matter of fact Jack was really thinking of the old ranch and the
+people at home, whom Olive's coming had brought to mind more vividly
+than usual.
+
+"I'm glad Jean and Ralph are at the ranch this year with Ruth and Jim,"
+she said finally. "What a pleasure it must be to Jean that Ralph is such
+a successful engineer--one of the biggest in the United States, Jim
+writes. But Jim always liked Ralph better than any of the husbands. He
+never could altogether forgive Frank for being an Englishman."
+
+"Oh Ralph has not been at the ranch much," Olive added, looking up from
+her book. "He has been working out on the coast and at Panama, but I
+think Jean is glad to have a rest because she has traveled with him so
+much."
+
+In the ensuing silence Jack must actually have dozed, and certainly
+Olive found a more absorbing article in her magazine. But Jack must also
+have dreamed, for she woke thinking she heard a voice calling her from
+outdoors, "Jack! Jack!"
+
+This was, of course, out of the question except in a dream. Kent House
+was a mile from any place other than its own Lodge. Besides no one whom
+she could possibly imagine would call out "Jack!" in such a fashion and
+at such an hour of the night.
+
+Nevertheless Olive looked surprised, so she too must have heard some
+kind of a noise.
+
+The second time the sound was heard, Jack started up.
+
+"Please ring the bell for the servants, Olive. I am sure I hear a voice
+calling me. It sounds absurd and yet I must find out who it is. Even if
+the servants insist this house is haunted, no one has ever yet suggested
+that the lawn is also haunted."
+
+Then, in characteristic fashion, and without putting a wrap over her
+white dress or waiting for any one to accompany her, Jack ran through
+the library and out into the broad hall. There was no one near, so she
+pulled open the heavy front door.
+
+Leading up to Kent House was a winding avenue of trees. At some little
+distance down the avenue, Lady Kent thought she could see a dark object
+apparently standing still in the center of the road. Without pausing
+even long enough for Olive to join her, she ran through the darkness
+toward it.
+
+"Jack! Jack! be careful!" she heard the voice call, and this time she
+recognized whose voice it was.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE VOICE
+
+
+"BUT, Frieda, how could you possibly have arranged to arrive in the
+middle of the night like this?"
+
+Jack had reached the waiting taxicab, which stood transfixed in the
+middle of the road and had pulled open the door of the vehicle, only to
+find her sister sitting inside, almost completely enveloped in steamer
+blankets and bags and boxes.
+
+"The cab broke down," Frieda remarked plaintively, evidently attempting
+to explain last conditions first. It seemed not to have occurred to her
+that even in the event of this difficulty, she could have gotten out and
+walked up to the house. But it was eminently characteristic of Frieda
+simply to sit still and call for her sister, as she always had done in
+any emergency when they were both girls.
+
+The next moment Lady Kent, with the assistance of the driver, had helped
+her visitor to alight. If Olive and the butler had not arrived just
+then, she might again have forgotten her dignity and begun dragging out
+Frieda's bags. But instead, she and Olive, escorted Frieda up the
+avenue, leaving the two men to bring her possessions.
+
+"I was lonely after Olive left me in New York," Frieda explained. "So
+when I read in the paper one morning that a particularly comfortable
+steamer was sailing, I decided not to wait an entire week, if I could
+get a nice stateroom. I thought Olive would not need but a few days to
+tell you. You have told, haven't you, Olive?" Frieda demanded, with a
+slight change of tone.
+
+When Olive answered "yes," briefly, she went on:
+
+"Please don't ask me any questions tonight, Jack. I'm most dead. No; I
+didn't have a rough crossing, but I have never arrived anywhere alone
+before in my whole life. I knew I could call up Frank at his club in
+London, but I did not wish to see him first. Still, I don't care what he
+thinks, since I have lost all faith in men. But I don't see why some one
+did not meet me at the station here. I telegraphed from Liverpool that I
+was on the way."
+
+Jack shook her head.
+
+"Curious dear, but we never received your telegram."
+
+"Oh, well;" Frieda added more indulgently, "I didn't exactly telegraph
+myself, but I gave the money to a boy and told him what to say. Perhaps
+he made a mistake, or kept the money, or something," she ended
+nonchalantly. For they were now entering the great hall at Kent House
+and Frieda realized that she did not care very much for small things, so
+grateful was she to be again with her sister.
+
+Impulsively she turned and embraced her.
+
+Perhaps it was because Frieda was tired, but Jack could see that she was
+not so unaffected by what she had been passing through as Olive had
+imagined.
+
+It is true Frieda looked as much like an exquisite wax doll as ever. Her
+eyes were as large and delicately blue, and her hair was a mass of soft
+yellow curls; yet there was a subtle change in her expression.
+
+Olive had led the way into the library.
+
+"We won't talk about anything until you like, Frieda," Jack whispered.
+
+"Will you go up to your rooms now or have something to eat first down
+here with Olive and me?" she asked.
+
+Frieda permitted Olive and Jack to remove her coat and hat. A few
+moments later, however, she announced that she preferred going upstairs
+to bed. So Jack finally bade her goodnight, after arranging that she was
+to ring her bell for breakfast, when she wished it the next morning.
+
+When Frieda rang for breakfast it was nearly eleven o'clock and Jack
+went into her room with the maid who carried the tray.
+
+Frieda ate her morning repast languidly, while her sister sat beside her
+talking of trivial things.
+
+"Where is Olive?" Frieda inquired finally. And when informed that Olive
+was in the nursery with the children, protested: "I suppose you know I
+am jealous of your baby's being named for Olive. Of course I know you
+and she are very dear friends; but, after all, I am your sister."
+
+"I felt that way about it too, Frieda, but Frank seemed not to wish a
+German name," Jack answered, "and Vive has her own name now anyhow.
+Maybe the next time."
+
+Frieda frowned. "Don't talk of next time, Jack. I can't imagine your
+having a family. I hate being married." And without any other warning
+two large tears rolled down Frieda's cheeks.
+
+"I'd rather tell you what has happened between Henry and me this minute
+and get through with it. And I'd prefer to tell you without Olive's
+hearing. I don't mean to be impolite, but Olive is almost an old maid
+and old maids always take the man's part."
+
+In spite of her anxiety Jack was compelled to laugh. Frieda had always
+been such a funny mixture of babyishness and worldly wisdom.
+
+She was now sitting up in bed with a number of white pillows piled
+behind her and wearing a light blue cashmere jacket over her gown. The
+English air was cooler than that to which she was accustomed.
+
+"I hope nothing very serious, Frieda?"
+
+"Nevertheless it is so serious that I never intend to speak to Henry
+Russell again, if I can avoid it. You see," Frieda sighed, "I suppose it
+is better to begin at the beginning and tell the whole thing. But, then,
+who knows when anything actually begins? At any rate during the first
+two years after Henry and I were married you remember we lived with
+Henry's parents. They were awfully nice to me and gave me hundreds of
+presents, but after awhile I became tired of living in another's house.
+Oh, the house was big and I had plenty of rooms, but you know it isn't
+like having a home of one's own is it, Jack?"
+
+After waiting for her sister to nod agreement, Frieda went on.
+
+"So I told Henry I wanted a house to myself, and I must say he and his
+mother and father were very nice about it--at first." Frieda made a
+dramatic pause.
+
+"It was Henry's fault all through though. You know he is the only child
+and his mother and father are dreadfully rich. But what do you suppose
+Henry decided? When we went to housekeeping for ourselves we were to
+live on the income he made as a Professor! Did you ever hear of anything
+so selfish?"
+
+"Well dear," Jack hesitated "maybe in a way it was selfish, because of
+course Henry's father and mother must have been disappointed not to be
+able to do for you. But, after all, it was self respecting of Henry. I
+suppose a man--especially an American one--likes to feel that he is able
+to be responsible for his own family."
+
+"That is exactly what Ruth and Jim Colter wrote me," Frieda protested
+indignantly. "I suppose it never occurs to any one of you to think of
+me!"
+
+"Yes, but you have your own income from our estate, Frieda," Jack added
+quickly, not wishing to offend her sister at the beginning of her
+confidence.
+
+"I know," Frieda continued more amiably. "So, at first, when I saw how
+much Henry's heart was set on our being independent, I agreed to try.
+But you know, Jack, I never have had much experience in managing money,
+and even when we were at school at Primrose Hall I got into debt. So,
+although Henry told me just what we had to live upon, I couldn't seem to
+make things come out even. Then, as I didn't want to worry him, I kept
+using my own income till that gave out. And then--"
+
+"Then what?" Jack inquired anxiously. Really she had been right in
+disapproving of Frieda's marrying so young. And more important than
+Frieda's youth was the fact that she, and all the people who had ever
+had anything to do with Frieda, had never treated her as a responsible
+human being. In her entire life she had never had any real care, or any
+real demand made upon her. Jack felt deeply uneasy. But whatever had
+happened, whatever might happen in the future, Frieda was her own
+adored small sister, and she intended to stand by her.
+
+"Oh nothing much," Frieda conceded, although her voice was less self
+assured, "only I told Henry's father. He used to be very fond of me
+before I left Henry; I don't know how he feels now," she murmured. "I
+believe he thought I was some kind of a joke, for he gave me a lot of
+money and told me not to worry. But he told Henry's mother and she did
+not think it was fair to Henry and must have let him know. Anyhow he was
+dreadfully angry and unkind to me."
+
+"How unkind?" Jack demanded. For, of course, the fear that Professor
+Russell had been unkind to Frieda had been always at the back of her
+mind, since learning of her sister's unhappiness. However, when she
+recalled the Professor's shyness and gentleness, it was difficult to
+imagine him in the role of a brute. But Jack had learned enough of life
+not always to trust to exteriors.
+
+"Oh, nothing very dreadful I suppose," Frieda conceded. "Henry fussed a
+lot and said I had not been fair to him and that it wasn't honest to
+keep things from him. He was always saying that I was very young and
+that I ought to confide everything in him."
+
+"Was there anything else, dear?" Jack inquired gently.
+
+Frieda nodded. "Yes. Oh, well, I might as well tell you the whole story
+since I have started. I was getting on a little better with the house,
+and Henry obtained some extra work to do, so that he made more money.
+But it kept him at home more in the evenings and besides he never did
+like to go out a great deal. He used to go sometimes because I liked it,
+but I never felt he was enjoying himself, and Henry never would learn to
+dance."
+
+This struck Jack as a perfectly absurd reason for a vital difference
+between a husband and wife, yet she dared not smile, nor did she wish to
+smile, seeing how important this really appeared to Frieda.
+
+But Frieda must have understood something of what was passing in her
+sister's mind, for she said:
+
+"I know that may sound ridiculous to you, Jack, but it has made a lot of
+difference to me." There was a choking note in Frieda's voice. "A lot of
+our trouble has come from it. You know I dearly love to dance, so I used
+to go out in the afternoons as I didn't like staying at home by myself
+and did not want to trouble Henry to take me often."
+
+"Not by yourself?"
+
+"Certainly not," Frieda returned pettishly, "one can't very well dance
+alone."
+
+"With any particular person?"
+
+For a moment Jack held her breath.
+
+At first Frieda shook her head. Afterwards she contradicted herself and
+nodded.
+
+"There were three or four persons--young fellows--some of them students
+at the University, and most of the time other girls, too. At first Henry
+did not mind. Then he said people were beginning to talk and there was
+one person I liked especially, because he danced better than any one
+else, whom Henry said I could not go with at all. But I did go. Then I
+told Henry I was bored anyhow and wanted to be free. He was very
+disagreeable. So I ran away and just left a note. But I haven't been
+very happy for a long time, Jack, darling. I suppose you were right when
+you said I ought not to have married so young. Perhaps I am spoiled and
+selfish. Henry says I am, but some people like me anyhow."
+
+Jack leaned over and took Frieda's chin in one of her firm white hands.
+
+"There isn't anybody else, is there little, sister?" she demanded.
+
+Returning her gaze straightforwardly, Frieda answered severely.
+
+"Certainly not, Jack; what do you think of me? Don't you know I am
+married. I told you I didn't like men any more, and never intend to have
+anything to do with them again."
+
+"Then I'll leave you now, dear, and send one of the maids to help you
+dress, if you like," Jack answered. "Let's don't talk any more today on
+this subject and please don't worry. You have lost all your color shut
+up by yourself in that wretched New York hotel. Hurry and come out in
+the garden with Olive and the babies and me."
+
+But when Jack had left her sister, she did not dismiss the thought of
+their conversation so lightly as her words implied. Perhaps Frieda had
+not made out a very good case for herself against her husband. It looked
+as if Professor Russell must have a story to tell as well. But the main
+fact appeared that Frieda was not happy in her marriage. Whatever the
+reasons, or whoever was at fault, it was the _thing_ itself which
+worried Jack. It was plain enough that Professor Russell was too old
+for Frieda, and that his scholarly tastes were not suited to her girlish
+ones.
+
+"A Professor of Dead Languages married to Frieda!" Jack whispered,
+blaming herself once again for allowing the marriage. Well, nothing
+could be decided for the present at any rate. One must wait for at least
+a little more light!
+
+Out in the garden Jack and Olive and Frieda played all morning with
+Jack's two babies. Jimmie was a little fair haired, blue eyed, rose
+cheeked English boy. Vive was a different kind of baby; she had light
+yellow hair, and dark eyes unlike either Jack's or Frank's. Perhaps she
+was going to resemble the lovely old time portrait in the library.
+
+Frieda spent several hours with Vive in her arms, although she never had
+been particularly interested in any baby before.
+
+When lunch was over, Jack said unexpectedly:
+
+"I hope you'll forgive me, Frieda, if I leave you and Olive for a little
+while. I promised a friend, Captain MacDonnell, to ride with him this
+afternoon before I dreamed you were coming, and I have forgotten to let
+him know. Besides," Jack added, since never even in small matters could
+she be dishonest, "I really want the ride. Captain MacDonnell is the
+one person who likes to ride as hard as I do. Oh, of course, English
+women ride marvelously well--far better than I, and there is nothing
+they won't attempt in hunting. But what I like now and then is just a
+straight cross country ride--as near like the old rides across the
+prairies as I can manage, though I must say this country does not look
+much like the prairies," Jack ended, as she glanced smiling out the
+window at her own beautiful, well kept English lawn. "Wait, Frieda, and
+meet Bryan won't you? he is one of Frank's and my dearest friends."
+
+So Olive and Frieda were standing together on the veranda at the side of
+Kent House when Jack and Captain MacDonnell finally rode off,
+accompanied by a groom.
+
+"I declare Jack looks better on horseback than any one in the world,"
+Frieda announced admiringly. "Her costume is more stylish than the old
+khaki or corduroy things she used to wear at the ranch, but I don't
+think Jack herself is very much changed, except that she is more
+attractive."
+
+At this instant Jack turned to wave her riding whip back at her sister
+and friend. She had on a perfect fitting tan cloth habit with a long
+English coat and short trousers and high riding boots. Her yellow brown
+hair was braided low on her neck and she wore a small derby.
+
+"Captain MacDonnell is handsome too, isn't he?" Frieda remarked
+reflectively, before moving to go indoors. "I wonder if he and Jack are
+very intimate and if Frank minds her riding with him like this? I
+suppose not, or Jack wouldn't," she acknowledged.
+
+Then she turned to Olive. "Don't look so cross, for goodness sake,
+Olive. I am not criticizing Jack. I don't suppose you imagine she is any
+more perfect than I do, only I was just thinking how you and the entire
+family will probably blame me for doing pretty much the same kind of
+thing that Jack is doing. Of course, I don't think there is anything
+wrong in it. It is absurd and horrid of people to believe there is."
+
+Olive was about to reply, but before she could speak, Frieda interrupted
+her.
+
+"Oh, I know exactly what you are going to say, Olive. Jack and I are
+very different persons! I know that as well as you do. I know, too, that
+Jack would never do anything except what was right. She could not if she
+tried. But she might do something silly. I don't suppose there is any
+human being in the world who fails to be foolish at one time or other in
+this life," Frieda concluded.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+A LATE ARRIVAL
+
+
+FRANK KENT returned unexpectedly from London early in the same
+afternoon. He had not yet heard of Frieda's arrival, so that they at
+once spent an hour talking together.
+
+Lord Kent, as most men did, treated his sister-in-law as a very pretty
+and charming young woman, who was not to be taken seriously. His wife
+had told him of Frieda's difficulty with her husband, but not of the
+cause. At that time she was not aware of it. Also she had instructed him
+not to mention the prospect of Professor Russell's appearance in
+England. So Frieda and Frank chatted and teased each other, as they had
+since she was a little girl just entering her teens, but neither
+referred to any unpleasant subject.
+
+Lord Kent had seemed tired when he first came home and was disappointed
+to find his wife absent.
+
+After his conversation with Frieda he relaxed and appeared more cheerful
+and good natured. This was the effect Frieda usually had upon masculine
+persons. She was so gentle and pretty, and her eyes were such a clear
+blue that one felt she could be easily influenced or persuaded. But the
+truth was that Frieda was no more easily controlled than a kitten. If
+ever one tries to train a little domestic animal, it will be discovered
+that a dog is far more quickly influenced than a kitten. As a matter of
+fact a kitten is probably the most unchangeable of all domestic pets.
+
+Since the early afternoon the July day had altered. A soft rain had
+begun falling, so that tea at Kent House was served in the library.
+
+Olive, Frieda and Lord Kent waited half an hour later than usual,
+thinking that Jack and Captain MacDonnell would return. Then they drank
+their tea slowly, still believing that the riders would surely appear
+before they had finished.
+
+At half past five, when there was still no sign of his wife and friend,
+Lord Kent got up and several times walked back and forth from his chair
+to the big French window.
+
+For the moment Frieda had gone out of the room, so that he finally spoke
+to Olive.
+
+"I suppose it is ridiculous of me, but I am always more or less uneasy
+when Jack and Bryan go off for rides together. Jack is the most fearless
+horsewoman in the world and Bryan the most all round, fearless man. He
+has killed big game in Africa and India and Australia, traveled in the
+Congo and in other equally uncivilized places. He never used to stay for
+any length of time in England. Now and then I have an idea of forbidding
+Jack to ride with him, I am so uncertain of what reckless thing they may
+do together."
+
+"Oh, I don't think you need worry, Frank," Olive returned, "Jack is
+fearless but I don't think she has been reckless since the accident she
+had when a girl."
+
+Although she could scarcely speak of it, Olive was smiling to herself
+over Frank's use of the word "forbid." She never recalled that any one
+had ever forbidden Jack to do anything she wished so long as she had
+known her. But probably Frank's forbidding was of the gentlest kind.
+Olive felt she must remember that the English attitude toward marriage
+was not the same as the American, although when an Englishman marries an
+American girl they are supposed to strike the happy medium.
+
+Entering the room again just as Frank concluded his speech, Frieda was
+even more startled when she recalled that the use of this very word had
+been one of the reasons for the most serious quarrel she had ever had
+with her husband. Henry had never used the word a second time.
+
+Another hour passed. Still Jack and Captain MacDonnell had not returned.
+Moreover, by this time the rain had become a steady downpour. Olive and
+Frieda were also uneasy.
+
+"If you will forgive my leaving you, I believe I will go and see if I
+can find what has become of the wanderers," Frank suggested. Then,
+without further explanation or discussion, he went away.
+
+Ten minutes later, mounted on his own horse, he was riding down the
+rain-washed road. He had found that the groom, who had accompanied Jack
+and Captain MacDonnell, had gotten separated from them and returned home
+half an hour before.
+
+Frank was uncertain whether he were the more angry or uneasy. It seemed
+impossible to imagine what misfortune could have befallen his wife and
+friend, which would have made it impossible for them to have either
+telephoned or sent some message home. Yet it was equally impossible to
+conceive that Jack would be so careless as to forget every one else in
+the pursuit of her own pleasure. Even if she had been uncertain of his
+arrival from London, there was Olive, who had been her guest only a few
+days and Frieda not twenty-four hours. But as a matter of fact Jack had
+known he would be down sometime during the evening although she did not
+know the hour.
+
+July is one of the long twilight months in England. Nevertheless,
+because of the rain, the evening was a kind of smoke grey with the
+faintest lavender tones in the sky. A heavy mist was also rising from
+the ground, so that with the falling rain one could not see many yards
+ahead.
+
+Lord Kent's plan was to leave word with his lodgekeeper at the lodge
+gate to follow after him in case any word came from Lady Kent, or if she
+returned home before he did. But a moment or so before reaching the
+lodge, while yet in his own avenue, although at some distance from Kent
+House, Frank heard laughter and low voices. There was no doubting the
+laughter was Jack's.
+
+Frank pulled up his horse abruptly and stood still. The oncoming
+figures were walking and leading their horses instead of riding. That
+instant, because he was no longer uneasy, Frank discovered that he was
+angrier and more hurt than he cared to show.
+
+All at once he overheard Jack say:
+
+"Do hurry, please, Bryan; I'm afraid everybody at home may be uneasy."
+
+But instead of hurrying, they must have stopped again. For the second
+time Jack murmured, "I don't see how I could ever have been such a
+wretch, or how I'll ever confess to Frank."
+
+Then Captain MacDonnell's inquiry:
+
+"What are you going to say?"
+
+And his wife's answer:
+
+"Why, tell the truth and face the music; what else is there to do,
+Bryan?"
+
+In the past few years since his marriage, undoubtedly Frank Kent had
+either altered or simply developed. Sometimes it is difficult to
+determine which one of these two things a human being has done. Frank
+had always been quiet and determined. If he had been otherwise he would
+never have tried for so many years to persuade Jacqueline Ralston to
+marry him. But now that he had grown older, he certainly appeared
+sterner. He seemed to have certain fixed ideas of right and wrong, and
+they were not broad ideas, to which he expected at least the members of
+his own household to conform.
+
+The two wayfarers were now in sight and Frank dismounted.
+
+"I am sorry to have been compelled to play eavesdropper," he said
+curtly, when they also caught sight of him.
+
+Jack was soaked with rain and her boots and riding habit were splashed
+with mud. A little river of water filled and overflowed the brim of her
+hat. But her cheeks were a deep rose color and her grey eyes dear and
+shining.
+
+Frank would never have confessed that he felt a slight pang of jealousy
+at the good time his wife and friend must have been having, while he had
+been making himself miserable with the thought that a disaster had
+befallen them.
+
+Jack's hand was resting on the nose of her horse, while Captain
+MacDonnell held the bridles of both.
+
+"You have come out to search for us, haven't you, Frank?" Jack began
+penitently. "I am sorry; I did not know you could have arrived from
+London so soon." She was now close beside her husband. "The truth is,
+Frank, I have had rather a horrid tumble. For a person who thinks she
+knows how to ride, I seem to do the stupidest possible things."
+
+"You don't seem to have hurt yourself seriously, Jack," Frank answered
+grimly. For in spite of her penitence, which did not seem very profound,
+Jack looked extraordinarily happy and glowing.
+
+"No, I wasn't hurt in the least. I managed to get clear as we went down.
+But my horse's knee was sprained--not so badly as Bryan and I at first
+thought. Still I did not like to ride him, so we have been walking along
+through the rain for a few miles."
+
+"How did the accident occur? I am rather surprised, Jack," Frank
+answered, now plainly more sympathetic because a little uneasy at what
+could have happened to his wife.
+
+Jack turned aside and even in the dusk one could see she was
+embarrassed.
+
+"Oh, I was disobeying orders," she said with a pretence of lightness. "I
+went over a rather high fence, which I had never taken before, without
+waiting until Bryan could get up to me. I made the jump without trouble,
+but the ground on the other side was so soft that my horse's forefeet
+went down into it. He stumbled and fell. That is why I am such a
+spectacle," she concluded, touching her mud-stained habit with her whip.
+
+Whatever he may have felt, Frank would naturally not discuss a
+difference between himself and his wife before another person. He
+therefore made no comment, but instead suggested:
+
+"Suppose you get on my horse, Jack, and ride up to the house. Frieda and
+Olive are uneasy. Bryan and I will come along together."
+
+According to the English custom, Lord and Lady Kent occupied separate
+bedrooms, which opened into each other.
+
+A half hour later Jack was dressing for dinner when she heard Frank
+enter his room. But he did not come into her apartment or call out to
+her, although they were usually in the habit of discussing various
+questions through their open door, while they changed their clothes.
+
+Jack, of course, recognized that her husband was angry with her. Also
+she knew that he had a measure of right on his side. She had promised
+him not to attempt dangerous jumping in her cross-country riding. Her
+accident a number of years before had made him and all the members of
+her family more nervous about her than they would ordinarily have been,
+knowing that she had spent a large part of her life on horseback.
+Moreover, Frank had very rigid ideas about keeping one's word, not
+agreeing that one could swerve by a hair's breadth.
+
+In a good deal of haste, since dinner was to be announced at any moment,
+Jack put on a white satin dinner dress. It was an old one, but chanced
+to be particularly becoming. The gown was simply made, with a square
+neck and a fold of tulle about the throat and a long, severely plain
+skirt. Only a woman with a figure as perfect as Jack's could have looked
+well in it. Her hair was arranged with equal simplicity, being coiled
+closely about her head and held in place with a carved ivory comb.
+
+Half a dozen guests had been invited to dinner, nevertheless before
+going downstairs Jack went first into her husband's room.
+
+Jack had always had a lovely nature. In the old days at Rainbow Lodge in
+any difficulty with one of the Ranch girls, although having a high
+temper, she had been quick to confess herself in the wrong. Since her
+marriage she had been more than ever inclined to do likewise with her
+husband. So it was but natural that Frank should be under the impression
+that she would at all times eventually come around to his point of view.
+He did not realize that under some circumstances Jack might be as
+inflexible as he was.
+
+However, she waited a moment now with perfect good temper, while Frank
+pretended that he had not heard her enter his room. When he finally did
+look toward her, she went up to him and put her arms about him. Then, as
+he continued to frown, Jack smiled. She knew that her husband took small
+matters too seriously, having made this discovery soon after her
+marriage, just as all girls make similar discoveries. But Jack was wise
+enough to realize that she must try as wisely as she could to discount
+this uncomfortable characteristic.
+
+"Don't be grouchy, please, Frank," she murmured. "I told you I was
+sorry, and you know that every now and then I have to get rid of some of
+my surplus American energy. After a hard ride with Bryan I can be a
+conventional English Lady for weeks."
+
+In spite of her good intention, Jack's remark was not wise. No matter
+how devoted a man and woman may be to each other, there is obliged to
+be some difference of opinion in every international marriage.
+
+Frank was extremely sensitive over the idea that Jack was not as happy
+in the English life he offered her, as she had been in the old days on
+her own ranch.
+
+"That is unfortunate, Jack," he returned, "for I have made up my mind
+that it will be wiser for you not to ride with Bryan again. I am afraid
+you are both too fond of adventure to be trusted."
+
+Then, as Frank had delivered his edict, his own good temper was
+restored. As he was already dressed, putting his arm across Jack's
+shoulder, he started for the door. He was really immensely proud of Jack
+and thought she looked unusually lovely tonight. In spite of the number
+of years he had been married he never introduced her to his friends, or
+saw her at the head of his table, without a feeling of pride. Also,
+Frank counted on Jack's sweetness of temper. It did not occur to him
+that she would disagree with his request, or rather with his command,
+since without intending it, he had expressed his wish in such a fashion.
+
+Nevertheless Jack hesitated. She knew that Frank was not in an agreeable
+mood for a discussion then. Also, that they could not keep their guests
+waiting while one took place.
+
+"I think that is rather arbitrary of you, Frank, since neither Bryan nor
+I are children and he is one of the friends I most enjoy. But perhaps we
+had better talk of this at another time."
+
+Frank nodded, Jack's manner affording no idea that she would not
+ultimately give in to him, nor was she sure herself. It may be that Jack
+had become too much of a domestic pacifist--a woman who wishes for peace
+at any price.
+
+On the landing of the steps, just before they went down to dinner, Frank
+remarked hastily:
+
+"Oh Jack, I had a marconigram from Professor Russell. He must have heard
+of Frieda's sudden departure from New York. In any case his ship is due
+tomorrow, for he left the day after she sailed."
+
+"Gracious, have you told Frieda?" Jack returned nervously, forgetting
+for the instant her own personal quandary. "Frieda announced that she
+never would agree to see Professor Russell again. In any case I had
+hoped we might have a few weeks of grace, to allow things to quiet down
+or perhaps to persuade Frieda to change her mind. The only thing now is
+not to allow Professor Russell to come to Kent House until Frieda gives
+her consent."
+
+"Nonsense, Jack," Frank answered reassuringly, "Frieda cannot behave in
+any such fashion. You have not told me the trouble, but I suspect that
+Frieda has simply been a spoiled child. Besides, in any case, she has no
+right to refuse at least to see her husband and talk the situation over.
+Don't worry; I'll discuss the matter with Frieda myself in the morning
+and bring her around. You see, I telegraphed Russell at the dock to come
+directly to us, as I shall spend tomorrow at home."
+
+"All right," Jack conceded, a good deal worried, but also slightly
+amused. If her husband wished to undertake to persuade Frieda to change
+her mind, she was glad that the task was his and not hers. Of course
+Frank thought it would be a simple matter, since he had yet really to
+know his sister-in-law. It was only natural that he should suppose
+Frieda would be easier to guide than his wife, judging by Frieda's
+manner and appearance! Men are not always wise in their judgment of
+feminine character.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+AN APPARITION
+
+
+THE next morning Frieda received a message from her brother-in-law
+asking her to give him half an hour of her time, whenever it was
+convenient to her.
+
+In a way she had anticipated this request, although it had come sooner
+than she expected. Frieda knew that Frank was fond of her and regarded
+himself as her brother. She had no other. Also, she held a wise idea
+inside her blonde head, believing that men were apt to stand together in
+many difficulties of the kind in which she and her husband were now
+involved.
+
+However, Frieda did not, of course, anticipate the news of her husband's
+having immediately followed her to Europe. She had not written to him or
+to any friend in Chicago since her sudden departure. But she had made up
+her mind that the last interview between herself and Henry was their
+final one. There could be no reason for their ever meeting again. She
+supposed, of course, that there were certain matters that would have to
+be arranged in the future, but Frieda was not given to troubling herself
+over details. Someone else had always attended to such things for her,
+in order that she might have her way. Later, Jim Colter, or Frank, or a
+lawyer--Frieda was entirely vague as to the method to be employed--would
+have to see that she was released from the cause of her unhappiness.
+
+For since arriving at Jack's house not thirty-six hours before, Frieda
+had been happier than she had for several months. Therefore, during the
+night she had decided for the hundredth time, that her husband must be
+the sole cause of all the upsetting emotions which had been recently
+troubling her. So soon as she could learn to forget Henry and put the
+recollection of him entirely out of her mind, she would again become the
+perfectly care free and irresponsible Frieda of the old days at the
+Rainbow Ranch.
+
+As she was not fond of getting up in the mornings and usually did pretty
+much what she liked in her sister's house, Frieda had not gone down to
+breakfast. However, she sent word to her brother-in-law that she would
+be glad to see him in her own sitting room between eleven and twelve
+o'clock.
+
+Whether it was done intentionally or not, Frieda put on a frock in which
+she looked particularly young. It was a simple white muslin, with sprays
+of blue flowers and folded kerchief fashion across Frieda's white
+throat. Nothing could really make Frieda appear demure; her lips were
+too full and crimson; her nose was too retrousée and her hair held too
+much pure sunlight. But she could look very innocent and much abused,
+and this was the impression she subconsciously wished to make. One must
+not believe that Frieda actually thought out matters of this kind, but
+she was one of the women who acted on what is supposed to be feminine
+instinct.
+
+Frank thought Frieda looked about sixteen instead of twenty-two when he
+arrived to talk matters over with her. So at once it struck him as
+absurd that he was forced to discuss so serious a question as leaving
+her husband with a mere child like Frieda. Instead of argument Frank
+began with persuasion. First he invited Frieda to tell her side of the
+story, which he had heard in part from Jack. Although he had said at the
+time of his wife's confidence, that Frieda had not made much of a case
+for herself, on hearing her story from Frieda's own lips he offered no
+such criticism.
+
+When Frieda ended she was crying, so that Frank sympathetically took her
+hand to console her as any other man would. Then, while holding her
+hand, he attempted a mild argument in favor of the Professor, finally
+concluding:
+
+"Frieda, your husband is coming to Kent House some time this afternoon.
+Since it is really your duty to see him and talk over the
+misunderstanding between you, I feel sure you will."
+
+Nevertheless, Frieda gently but obstinately shook her head.
+
+"I'm sorry to disappoint you, Frank, and Jack too, if she really feels
+as you do, but I never mean to see Henry again."
+
+However, until lunch time Frank remained in the blue sitting room
+discussing the foolishness of her position with Frieda; afterwards he
+felt that he had never presented any subject so skillfully in his career
+as a member of Parliament, as he argued her own case with his
+sister-in-law. Frieda never questioned him, never contradicted him, only
+she continued to shake her head and to repeat gently, "I'm sorry, Frank,
+but I can't."
+
+Several times Lord Kent attempted severity because his severity usually
+influenced most people. It influenced Frieda, but only to such an
+outburst of tears, that he was forced to spend the next five minutes in
+apologizing in order to comfort her.
+
+At one o'clock Jack, appearing at the door, immediately recognized the
+situation. Both Frank and Frieda appeared exhausted. Frieda announced
+that she would not come to lunch, but would prefer to lie down all the
+afternoon. As a matter of fact the possibility that her husband might
+make his appearance at Kent House was the real reason which kept Frieda
+in her own room, although offering the excuse of a headache.
+
+Therefore, about four o'clock, when Professor Henry Tilford Russell
+finally did arrive, he was able to see only Lord and Lady Kent, his
+brother-in-law and sister-in-law.
+
+Personally, Jack was uncertain how she should greet him. Of what actual
+unkindness he was guilty of to Frieda she was not yet certain.
+Nevertheless, the fact remaining that he had not made her little sister
+happy filled Lady Kent with resentment and dislike. Certainly, Professor
+Russell should have realized how much older he was than Frieda and not
+expected her to conform to his dullness and routine.
+
+As a matter of fact Jack also would have preferred not to have to come
+in contact with her sister's husband until she understood the situation
+between them more thoroughly. Yet, when Professor Russell was announced,
+it was she who was forced to go first into the drawing room.
+
+There must have been a delay of about five minutes since she had waited
+that length of time for her husband, who chanced to have gone out to the
+stables to give an order. Then, fearing to appear intentionally rude,
+Jack approached their visitor alone.
+
+He could not have heard her as she entered, for he was sitting in a
+large chair with his head resting in his hand and looked so exhausted,
+possibly from his trip, that Lady Kent forgot for the moment to be
+angry. When he aroused himself and later held out his hand, she took it
+at once, although a moment before she had not been sure whether she
+ought, because of her own loyalty to Frieda.
+
+"Is Frieda well? If you only realized the relief to find she is safe
+here with you! At first I did not know where the child had gone,"
+Professor Russell began so simply, that any human being would have been
+disarmed.
+
+It will be remembered, that in the last volume of the "Ranch Girls At
+Home Again," Professor Russell is introduced to the Ranch girls by Ralph
+Merritt, who told them of the Professor's intense dislike for girls. At
+first he appeared to regard Frieda only as a child and therefore made an
+exception of her. Then, later, after his accident at Rainbow Mine when
+his leg was broken and Frieda undertook to keep him amused, an amazing
+friendship developed between them which finally resulted in their
+marriage.
+
+In replying to his question Jack found herself answering as reassuringly
+as if Frieda really had been a runaway child, since this seemed to be
+the spirit in which her husband thought of her.
+
+"She will see me?" he asked eagerly. But when Jack shook her head he did
+not appear surprised, being evidently accustomed to Frieda's vagaries.
+
+Moreover, Lord Kent then came into the room.
+
+Afterwards, Professor Russell related his side of the difficulty between
+himself and his wife. His story did not after all differ so much from
+Frieda's account, for he put the blame upon himself, as she had done.
+
+"I was too old for her; we ought never to have married. The fault was
+all mine," he ended so despondently, that Jack felt as if she could not
+accept the very conclusion she had reached the day before.
+
+Professor Russell could not be persuaded to remain long--not even for
+tea. It was agreed, however, that he would spend the next few weeks in
+London and that later they might reach some decision. In the meantime
+Jack promised to do her best to persuade her sister to have at least one
+interview with her husband.
+
+Lord Kent followed his brother-in-law to the door.
+
+"Frieda is a spoiled baby; you have simply been too good to her. Some
+day she will wake up and find this out for herself," he declared.
+
+But Professor Russell only shook his head sadly and departed.
+
+Even after learning of her husband's departure Frieda still refused to
+join her family. What she was thinking about alone in her own apartment
+no one knew, since she asked that no one disturb her.
+
+However, at half past five, realizing that her husband then must be
+safely on his way back to London, Frieda decided that she could endure
+her own rooms no longer. Without a word to anyone, she put on a long,
+light weight blue coat and a small, close fitting, blue turban and
+passing down through the long halls and through a side entrance vanished
+into the outdoors.
+
+It was Frieda's plan merely to walk about in the gardens until she could
+persuade herself into a calmer frame of mind. She was sure, of course,
+that she cared nothing for her husband and yet all afternoon she had
+found herself wondering if he were not worn out by his journey.
+Ordinarily he was not a good traveler and he must also have suffered
+through being compelled to desert his summer classes at the University
+in order to seek her.
+
+Frieda discovered one of the gardeners at work in the flower beds and,
+as he persisted in talking with her, she started down one of the shaded
+avenues along the edge of the park in order to be alone. She did not
+often walk for any distance, since she had never been so fond of
+exercise as the other girls.
+
+But Frieda felt unexplainably restless and out of sorts. This was
+foolish because, having made up her mind that she wanted her freedom
+and being determined to gain it, there was no point in worrying.
+
+Frieda kept walking hurriedly on. It was a beautiful, soft afternoon,
+with the first hint of twilight in the sky and in the atmosphere.
+
+Kent Park covered several acres and Frieda wandered further from the
+house than she knew. After a time the road which she had taken curved
+into a path leading into the woods. There was a fairly heavy forest near
+by, which was a part of the Kent estate and she strolled into this.
+
+Later, Frieda sat down for a few minutes. She was in no hurry to return
+home, except in time for dinner which was at a late hour, according to
+the English custom. Not that she meant to appear at dinner, but that
+Jack or Olive would be sure to seek her at that time.
+
+Frieda made rather a charming picture amid the scene she had
+unconsciously chosen for herself. She was sitting on the trunk of a tree
+which had fallen from the weight of years and infirmities. There was a
+little clearing behind her and, as she had taken off her hat, the sun
+shone on her bowed head and shoulders. She wished very much that she
+could stop thinking about a number of things, for Frieda was one of the
+people who resent having to grow up and there are more of them in this
+world than we realize.
+
+Then, suddenly, Frieda heard an odd noise, which at least startled her
+sufficiently to bring the result she had been wishing for, since it made
+her stop thinking of unpleasant things. The noise was not loud and it
+would have been difficult to have explained exactly what the sound was.
+Only Frieda for the first time realized that she had been unwise in
+having come so far away from the house without mentioning to anyone
+where she was going.
+
+The woods in which she was resting was a portion of the game preserves
+belonging to the Kent Estate, or a portion of land set apart for hunting
+at certain times of the year on English estates. But no one is supposed
+to hunt on this land except the owner of the estate and the friends whom
+he may care to invite.
+
+Frieda, of course, had stayed long enough in England on other visits to
+understand that poachers are more or less frequent. She thought perhaps
+the noise she had heard was a man in hiding, who had been hunting and
+feared she might report him. The fact that it was summer time, when
+hunting was infrequent, made no impression upon her.
+
+[Illustration: IN A FEW MOMENTS SHE WAS IN A PANIC]
+
+At first, however, she was not seriously frightened, although she
+concluded to hurry back to Kent House as quickly as possible.
+
+But when she started back through the woods, whoever it was in hiding
+evidently attempted to follow her. The faster she walked, the faster the
+footsteps came on behind.
+
+However, Frieda did not turn her head to discover her pursuer. She had
+been nervous and worried all day, or she might not have become so
+alarmed. Instead of looking back she continued hurrying on faster and
+faster until, in a few moments, she was in a panic. Then she started to
+run and to her horror realized that a man was also running with long,
+easy strides behind her.
+
+Frieda was totally unaccustomed to looking after herself in any
+emergency, and had never been compelled to do so--even in small
+adversities. Now she had a sudden impulse to call out for someone, but
+had only sufficient breath to increase her speed. If she could get a
+little nearer the house, one of the servants could be sure to come to
+her assistance.
+
+But Frieda had run only a few yards when, as a perfectly natural result
+of her panic, she tripped over some roots hidden in the underbrush and
+fell forward with her face amid the leaves and twigs and with one leg
+crumpled under her.
+
+She must have struck her chin for she felt a dull pain and a queer
+numbness in her side. However, when she tried to disentangle herself and
+jump up quickly the pain became more acute. Nevertheless, for one
+instant Frieda struggled and then lay still, for her pursuer had already
+reached her and was bending over her, for what purpose Frieda did not
+know.
+
+Then she heard a slow, inexpressibly familiar voice say:
+
+"I am afraid I have frightened you, my dear. I do trust you have not
+injured yourself." Then a pair of strong, gentle hands attempted to lift
+her.
+
+Naturally, Frieda's first sensation was one of amazement; the second,
+relief; and the third, anger.
+
+She managed, however, with assistance to sit in an upright position.
+Then she began brushing off the twigs and dirt which she felt had been
+ground into her face. Finally she recovered sufficient breath and self
+control to be able to speak.
+
+"Henry Russell!" she exclaimed, trying to reveal both dignity and
+disdain, in spite of her ridiculous position, "will you please tell me
+why you are hiding in Frank's woods like a thief, and why, when I
+refused to see you, you terrified the life out of me by chasing me until
+I nearly killed myself. I think, at least, I have broken my leg," she
+ended petulantly.
+
+Professor Henry Tilford Russell flushed all over his fair, scholarly
+face. Taking off his soft grey hat, he ran his hand over the top of his
+head, where the hair was already beginning to grow thin.
+
+"My dear Frieda, you do me an injustice," he began, "although I know my
+actions do appear as you have just stated them. The truth is I found
+myself unable to go away at once from Kent House. I am not fond of
+London. I dreaded the loneliness there; also I longed for a sight of you
+to know for myself that you were well. So I wandered about through the
+grounds at some distance from the house and finally entered these woods.
+When you came into them alone and so unexpectedly, it seemed as if I
+must speak to you. I started toward you and you ran. I did not think my
+pursuit would alarm you. It was one of the many things, Frieda, I should
+have understood and did not."
+
+In spite of the fact that the fault of the present situation was
+undoubtedly Professor Russell's, there was an unconscious dignity and
+graciousness about him as he made his apology, which Frieda recognized
+was undoubtedly lacking both in her appearance and emotions. She felt
+extremely cross and her leg hurt. She could not go up to the house
+assisted by a husband whom she had just scornfully refused to see, and
+yet she did not believe she could walk alone.
+
+"Very well, Henry; now that you have accomplished your purpose, I hope
+you will be good enough to leave me," Frieda demanded, believing that
+she would rather suffer anything than a continuance of her present
+humiliation.
+
+But Professor Russell did not stir.
+
+"I prefer to see you safely through the woods. When we are nearer the
+house I may be able to find someone to take my place."
+
+Professor Russell then leaned over and lifted Frieda to her feet. As a
+result she found that her leg was not broken or sprained, but only
+bruised, and that walking was possible if she moved slowly.
+
+However, Frieda suffered considerable pain and she was not accustomed to
+bodily discomfort. At first she tried not to rest her weight upon the
+Professor's arm, for he had put his arm under hers and was attempting to
+support her almost entirely. But, by and by, as the pain grew worse, she
+found herself growing more dependent and, as a matter of fact, her
+dependence seemed perfectly natural. Once it occurred to her that,
+during her first acquaintance with Professor Russell, he had been hurt
+and in more ways than one had leaned upon her. No one ever had asked any
+kind of care from her before, and in those days she had at least thought
+that she had fallen in love with the Professor. At least she had
+insisted upon marrying him, when her entire family had opposed the
+union.
+
+There was no conversation between the husband and wife, except that
+several times Professor Russell, without waiting to be asked, stopped
+for Frieda to rest.
+
+Then, by and by, when they had reached the edge of the woods, he saw one
+of the men servants at a little distance off and signalled to him.
+
+"There are many things I would like to talk over with you, Frieda, but
+this is not the time. Neither do I want you to think I meant to take an
+unfair advantage of you by forcing myself upon you without your
+knowledge. I think I scarcely realized myself just what I was doing. I
+am sorry you felt compelled to run away from home because we sometimes
+quarreled. I do not know just how much I was in the wrong at those
+times, but I fear you were not happy with me or you would not have let
+the fact that we differed about a good many things have made you wish to
+leave me. Please remember, Frieda, if there is ever a time when you wish
+to talk matters over with me, I shall be glad to come to you. I will not
+come again unless you summon me."
+
+Then, as the man servant had by this time reached them, Professor
+Russell gave Frieda into the man's charge.
+
+The next instant, bowing to her as if he had been a stranger, he turned
+and started in the opposite direction.
+
+Frieda did not remember whether she even said good-bye. She did think,
+however, that she would have liked to have reminded Henry to hold his
+shoulders straighter. Really he was not so old--only something over
+thirty. He seemed to have been one of the persons born old, caring
+always more for books than people--more for study than an active life.
+Frieda actually felt a little sorry for him. Always she must have been a
+disturbing influence in his life. Perhaps in his way he had been good to
+her, or at least had intended to be. She wished that she had told him to
+go back home because she could write to him there, or in case she ever
+wished to see him, she could also go home. She intended to go to the
+Rainbow ranch in the autumn.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE CLOUD
+
+
+THE next weeks in July were extraordinarily beautiful ones in England.
+The summer was warmer than usual and the sun shone with greater
+radiance. The English country was hauntingly lovely and serene.
+
+In spite of Frieda's trouble, the three Ranch girls enjoyed one another,
+as they had had no opportunity of doing since Jack's marriage and coming
+abroad to live.
+
+There were long walks and rides and exchanges of visits with their
+country neighbors. Now and then Lady Kent and Olive went up to London
+for a few days of the theatre and the last part of the social season.
+They were Lord Kent's guests in the Ladies' Gallery in the House of
+Parliament and drank tea on the wonderful old balcony that overlooks the
+Thames river. But Frieda preferred not to accompany them.
+
+London was never more filled with tourists, the greater number
+Americans intending to leave later for the continent.
+
+But so far as Professor Russell was concerned, no word had been heard
+from him since his unceremonious meeting with his wife. However, he had
+sent his banker's address to Lord Kent, saying that all mail would be
+forwarded to him from there. Then he appeared to have dropped completely
+out of sight for, in spite of his brother-in-law's effort toward
+friendliness, he had not called upon him a second time.
+
+In discussing the matter between themselves, Jack and Frank decided that
+this was possibly the best arrangement for the present. Frieda had never
+mentioned her unexpected discovery of her husband; nor did she ever
+voluntarily refer to her married life. Therefore, whatever was going on
+inside her mind, no one had any knowledge of it. As is often the case
+with women and girls of Frieda's temperament, she was better able to
+keep her own counsel than the women who are supposed to be strong minded
+and who are more apt to be frank.
+
+So far as Jack was concerned she had never reopened with Frank the
+question of her rides with Captain MacDonnell, because the latter had
+been away and he had not asked her to ride since his return.
+
+However, neither of these facts were so important as the feeling Jack
+had, that no propitious moment had arrived for a second discussion of
+the subject with her husband. She did not intend to defy him, but to
+make him see that he had no right to be so arbitrary and--more than
+that--so domineering. This had been Jack's usual method in any
+difference of opinion between herself and Frank, or in any unlikeness
+between the American and English point of view concerning marriage. As a
+matter of fact, more than half the time Jack had been successful.
+
+But, during the past few weeks she had seen that Frank was worried and
+unlike himself--that his attention was engaged on matters which were not
+personal. For if the weather and the climate appeared serene in these
+particular July weeks in England the state of English politics was not.
+For the country was being harassed by the questions of Home Rule for
+Ireland and by the Militant Suffrage movement.
+
+The Suffrage question was one which Lord and Lady Kent had agreed not to
+discuss with each other. To Jack, who had been brought up in
+Wyoming--the first of the Suffrage states in the United States--and who
+had seen the success of it there, the fact that the English nation held
+the idea of women voting in such abhorrence and with such narrow
+mindedness, was more a matter of surprise than anything else. The fact
+that her husband, who had also lived for a short time in Wyoming, should
+also oppose woman's suffrage was beyond her comprehension, except that
+Frank had the Englishman's love for the established order and disliked
+any change. Jack would not confess to herself that he also had the
+Englishman's idea that a woman should be subservient to her husband and
+that he should be master of his own house. To give women the freedom,
+which the ballot would bring, might be to allow them an independence in
+which the larger majority of the men of the British Isles did not then
+believe. Neither did they realize--nor did the suffragists
+themselves--how near their women were to being able to prove their
+fitness.
+
+One Saturday afternoon at the close of July, Captain MacDonnell invited
+Jack and Olive and Frieda and a number of his other neighbors and
+friends to tea at his place. He had no near relatives, and when he was
+in Kent county lived alone, except for his housekeeper and servants, in
+an odd little house, perhaps a century old, which had been left him by
+his guardian.
+
+The girls drove over together in a pony carriage, usually devoted to
+Jack's children. But at the gate they gave it into the charge of a boy
+in order that they might walk up to the house, which was of a kind found
+only in England.
+
+The house was built of rough plaster which the years had toned to a soft
+grey. Captain MacDonnell had the good taste to allow the roof with its
+deep overhanging eaves to remain thatched as it had been in early days.
+The building was small and one walked up to the front door through two
+long rows of hollyhocks. On either side of the hollyhock sentinels the
+earth was a thick carpet of flowers, and the little house seemed to rise
+out of its own flower beds.
+
+There were no steps leading to the front door except a single one, so
+the visitor entered directly into the hall which divided the downstairs.
+On the left side was a long room with a raftered ceiling and high narrow
+windows, and on the right Captain MacDonnell's den--a small room
+littered with a young soldier's belongings. Beyond were the dining room
+and kitchen and upstairs four bedrooms. As the house was so small
+Captain MacDonnell had turned his great, old-fashioned barn into extra
+quarters for guests. Between the house and the flower beds and the barn
+was an open space of green lawn with an occasional tree, and beyond was
+a tennis court. The place was tiny and simple compared to Kent House and
+yet had great charm.
+
+Jack and Olive and Frieda arrived before the other guests. They soon
+discovered that Mrs. Naxie--Captain MacDonnell's housekeeper--had
+arranged to serve tea in his living room.
+
+It was through Jack's suggestion that the arrangement was altered.
+
+"Please don't tell Mrs. Naxie, Bryan, that I spoke of it," she
+volunteered as soon as she beheld the preparations, "but don't you think
+the summer in England too short for people to spend an hour indoors when
+they can avoid it?"
+
+And Captain MacDonnell good naturedly agreed.
+
+As a matter of fact, Jack always poured tea for him when he had guests
+and she was able to be present, so she felt sufficiently at home to make
+her request.
+
+Captain MacDonnell's mother was an Irishwoman and his father a
+Scotchman. But they had both died when he was a little boy and he had
+spent the greater part of his boyhood with an old bachelor friend of his
+father's, who was his own guardian and had lived in the very house of
+which he was now the master.
+
+As neighbors he and Frank Kent had played together when they were small
+boys and had later gone to the same public school. Then Frank's illness
+sent him to the United States, where he was introduced into the lives of
+the Ranch girls, at about the same time his friend Bryan MacDonnell
+entered Cambridge and afterwards the army. But whenever he and Frank
+were together the old intimacy had continued, and Jack's coming had only
+seemed to turn their friendship into a three-cornered one.
+
+"Frank told me to tell you that he was sorry not to be able to come over
+with us this afternoon, Bryan," Jack announced a few moments later, when
+the four of them had gone out to select a place where tea could be
+served, "But for some reason or other he telephoned that he could not
+come down from London today. I don't know what is wrong with Frank
+lately. He has never been so absorbed in political matters. I am afraid
+Frieda and Olive will think he neglects his family disgracefully. Please
+tell them, Bryan, that he is sometimes an attentive husband."
+
+But as Captain MacDonnell did not answer at once, Olive remarked in a
+more serious tone than Lady Kent had used:
+
+"I think I am rather glad Frank takes his work as a member of Parliament
+as the most important thing he has to do. After all, helping to make the
+laws of one's country is a pretty serious occupation. Which do you think
+more serious--Captain MacDonnell, being a soldier and fighting when it
+is necessary to defend the laws, or making them in the beginning?"
+
+Captain MacDonnell smiled, but rather seriously. It occurred to Jack,
+who knew him so much better than the others, that Bryan did seem
+uncommonly grave this afternoon, in spite of his efforts to be an
+agreeable host.
+
+Then she took hold of Frieda's arm and they wandered off a short
+distance, leaving Olive and Captain MacDonnell to continue their
+conversation alone.
+
+"Do you know, Frieda," Jack whispered when they were safe from being
+overheard, "I would give a great deal if Bryan and Olive would learn to
+care for each other. Ordinarily I think it is horrid to be a matchmaker,
+but Bryan and Olive are both so lovely and you don't know what it would
+mean to me to have Olive live near me. It is heavenly these days, having
+you both here. You can't realize how lonely I get for you and my own
+country sometimes."
+
+Frieda looked critically over at Captain MacDonnell and Olive, who were
+standing close beside each other talking earnestly. In spite of Captain
+MacDonnell's ancestry his coloring was almost as dark as Olive's.
+
+Then Frieda turned her blue eyes on her sister.
+
+"Captain MacDonnell and Olive look too much alike," she argued. "I
+prefer marriages where the man and woman are contrasts."
+
+Then, although Lady Kent made no answer, she smiled to herself. If
+Frieda believed in contrasts in marriage, surely she did not mean merely
+in complexion and general appearance. Important contrasts in human
+beings went much deeper than appearances. Surely Frieda's own marriage
+had offered a sufficient contrast in years, taste, disposition and a
+dozen other things. However, instead of securing happiness, it seemed to
+have had the opposite result.
+
+During the remainder of the afternoon Jack thought nothing more about
+their early conversation, as she devoted herself entirely to Captain
+MacDonnell's other guests.
+
+It was just a little after six o'clock, when they were beginning to
+think of returning home, that Lady Kent observed one of her servants
+coming toward her across the lawn carrying a telegram.
+
+Never so long as she lived was Jack ever to forget that moment and the
+scene about her. There were about a dozen, beautifully costumed persons
+present--the women in silks and muslins, and the men in tennis flannels
+and other sport costumes. They were all talking in a light hearted
+fashion about small matters.
+
+Without any thought that it might be of particular importance Jack
+opened her telegram and before reading it apologized to the persons
+nearest her. It happened that Captain MacDonnell was not far away.
+
+Yet she read her telegram--not once, but several times--before it dawned
+upon her what her husband's words meant. Even then she did not really
+understand any more than the millions of other women in the world, who
+heard the same news and more within the next few days. The sky overhead
+was still blue; the earth was green and peaceful, and her companions
+were unconscious of tragedy.
+
+Nevertheless Frank's telegram had stated that the beginning of the war
+cloud had appeared over Europe--the cloud which was later to spread over
+so large a part of the world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+SO AS BY FIRE
+
+
+"BUT Henry cannot go; it is absurd! He never shot a gun in his life and
+besides I--" Frieda hesitated; her face flushing; yet she was trying to
+speak calmly.
+
+She and Olive and Jack and Frank Kent were in the library at Kent House
+with Captain MacDonnell talking one morning, several weeks since the
+afternoon tea and during, perhaps, the most momentous week in all
+history.
+
+"I think you must be mistaken about your husband's being unable to
+shoot, Frieda," Lord Kent answered dryly. "As a matter of fact I believe
+he is an expert; he told me himself that he had taken prizes for
+marksmanship when he was a boy, but had never cared to use his skill for
+hunting. As for your saying he can't go; well, the truth is, Frieda,
+Professor Russell has already gone. He came in to see me a few days ago
+to say that he had volunteered and was about to be sent somewhere in
+France."
+
+Frank had not intended to be unkind. So many things had happened and
+were happening every crowded second of the time that he was simply
+forgetting to think of the individual. However, under the circumstances,
+he did not suppose that Frieda would care very much what became of her
+husband.
+
+"You mean that Henry has joined the army--that he has crossed over to
+France without asking me how I would feel--without even coming to say
+good-bye," Frieda returned slowly. And suddenly even her brother-in-law
+observed the change in her expression. It was strange to see Frieda with
+her face paling; her full, red lips closed tight and her blue eyes dark
+and strained.
+
+"But, my dear child, how could your husband come to say good-bye to you
+when you have been steadfastly refusing to see him for weeks?" Frank
+continued, still a little impatient over feminine unreasonableness. "He
+told me to tell you his plans and that he had made all arrangements in
+case--"
+
+But, that instant, catching a warning glance from his wife, Lord Kent
+changed color over his own tactlessness and desisted. This was a time
+when everybody's nerves were overstrained; when hearts were torn to
+pieces and imaginations were picturing only horrors.
+
+"Won't you motor down to the station with me, please, Jack?" Lord Kent
+added, hastily, anxious to get away as soon as possible from the
+situation he had created.
+
+Jack slipped on a long tan coat and soft hat and went with her husband,
+leaving Olive to look after Frieda.
+
+"Bryan is expecting to be here again this afternoon for a farewell
+visit, dear. He has been delayed for some reason or other but hopes to
+leave with his regiment tomorrow," Frank announced on the way to his
+train. "Do you know I think Bryan is a lucky fellow these days, not to
+have anyone very close to him--anyone who cares very much what becomes
+of him. Oh, of course, I should care, more than I like to think; but I
+mean no mother or father--no family."
+
+"I should also care a great deal, Frank," Jack interrupted quietly.
+
+But Lord Kent went on, scarcely hearing her.
+
+"It is a funny thing that Bryan has never married. He is an uncommonly
+fascinating fellow. Of course, he hasn't much money; but that ought not
+to stand in his way. He has his profession. Queer, when he was a boy he
+used to talk about being an artist; but there is a lot of difference
+between an artist and a soldier. He must be glad now of his choice.
+Sometimes I think Bryan has never married because he has never seen any
+woman as attractive as you are. He has almost said as much to me."
+
+Jack shook her head almost angrily. "That is nonsense, Frank. After all,
+you know Bryan is pretty young; there is no use talking as if he were a
+confirmed old bachelor."
+
+After lunch that same afternoon Captain MacDonnell rode over to Kent
+House. He was wearing his service uniform of khaki--the short military
+coat, the full trousers drawn close at the knees and the high boots. He
+also wore the British officer's cap with the small visor and the other
+marks of his rank.
+
+Hearing the sound of his horse approaching, Jack went out on the veranda
+to greet him. Frieda was upstairs in her room and Olive was writing
+letters to Ruth Colter and Jean at the Rainbow Ranch.
+
+In her arms Jack carried her baby, with whom she had been playing.
+Indeed, ever since the news of war, some member of the family had
+seemed to wish to hold Vive, for her baby softness and sweetness was in
+some way a consolation.
+
+Jack had her baby's little yellow head pressed close against her bronze
+colored hair and made the baby wave its hand to the young officer as he
+drew nearer.
+
+When he came up to them on the veranda he kissed Vive's tiny hand.
+
+"May I have one of Vive's blue ribbons to tie in my buttonhole, please,
+Lady Jacqueline?" he asked. "Lady Jacqueline" being a title which
+Captain MacDonnell had originated for Jack, but which many other people
+also used. "Every knight, when he went off to the wars in the old days,
+wore his lady's colors. I should like to have Vive for my lady."
+
+Jack felt her fingers trembling a little as she unfastened the ribbon
+from her baby's sleeve and gave it to her friend.
+
+"Won't you take a farewell ride with me this afternoon, Jack?" Captain
+MacDonnell asked the next instant. "It will be the best way to manage
+our good-bye."
+
+For just the fraction of a second Jack hesitated. Yet, in that time, she
+had a sufficient opportunity to think over the entire situation.
+Captain MacDonnell had not asked her to ride with him since the
+afternoon, when her recklessness had displeased Frank. Since then she
+had never attempted to persuade Frank that his demand, that she never
+ride with Captain MacDonnell again, was unreasonable. Nevertheless, she
+felt fairly sure that under the present circumstance he could not
+object. Surely, Frank could not be so ungracious as to be vexed with her
+for disobeying his wish at such a time. She would, of course, ride
+carefully and take no foolish risks.
+
+Jack gave Vive into Captain MacDonnell's keeping.
+
+"Yes, I'll go if you'll come back to dinner with Frank and the rest of
+us," she agreed. "I'll be ready in five minutes."
+
+Jack sent the nurse to look after the baby and in ten minutes was ready
+for the ride.
+
+It was a sultry August afternoon, very still, and yet with a strange
+throbbing in the air of many tiny insects. The hawthorn was no longer in
+bloom, but the two friends rode along the English lanes sweet with
+blossoming elderberry and blackberry bushes.
+
+Curious how, when one comes to say farewell, there is so little that
+seems worth saying!
+
+During the first part of the ride Jack and Captain MacDonnell were
+frequently silent, except that Jack, of course, made the conventional
+inquiries one might ask of a soldier. Was he in good condition? Did he
+have everything he needed? Was there anything she could do for him--such
+as looking after his house while he was gone?
+
+In response to each question Captain MacDonnell shook his head. He had
+turned over his house to be used for the Belgian refugees.
+
+They were actually on their way home before he began to talk.
+
+Then he took a letter from his pocket.
+
+"I wish you would give this to Frank for me, Lady Jack, and if anything
+happens to me ask him to read it, and to let you read it afterwards if
+he thinks best. Sorry to be mysterious, but this is a kind of cranky
+wish of mine."
+
+Jack slipped the letter inside the coat she was wearing.
+
+"All right, Bryan. You know I have always felt rather like a big sister
+to you; I am nearly a year older. But, today I think I feel like your
+mother," she continued, trying to smile, but with her voice breaking a
+little. "So you must promise me, if there is anything I can ever do for
+you later on you will let me know. In a way I believe I am almost
+envious of you, Bryan. I think I have wanted to be a boy ever since I
+could sit on the back of a horse and ride over our ranch with my father.
+That is why people have always called me 'Jack,' I suppose. Anyhow, just
+now, I think I would like to go out to meet a great adventure. I wonder
+what a woman's great adventure is. I presume it is marriage for most of
+us. At any rate Frank is terribly envious of you, Bryan. He has said so
+to me half a dozen times. He does not seem to know whether he ought to
+go to the front, which is what he wants to do, or to stay on here doing
+his work in Parliament. Of course, he ought to stay," Jack argued,
+repeating what she had been saying a good many times to her husband
+recently. "There never was a time when a member of Parliament had such
+great work to do, and that is Frank's real duty."
+
+When Jack gave Captain MacDonnell's letter to her husband that night she
+spoke of their having had a ride together. Although he made no comment,
+she could see that he was not altogether pleased. It occurred to Jack
+then, though only vaguely, that if Frank objected to her disobeying him
+in small matters, their life might be pretty difficult if ever they had
+a difference of opinion and she disobeyed him in a large one.
+
+"Strange for Bryan to have confided this letter to us," Frank remarked,
+as he put it carefully away in a strong box where he kept his important
+papers. "I wonder what old Bryan has written? I never dreamed he had a
+secret in his life which he has never told to me. But, perhaps he wants
+us to do some favor or other for him. Truly I hope we may never have to
+open the letter."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+SEVERAL MONTHS LATER
+
+
+FRIEDA read a letter she had just received and laughed.
+
+Laughter was not frequent at Kent House those days, so that Jack and
+Olive looked up from the work they were doing. Olive was rolling
+bandages and Jack was writing notes at her desk. The three of them were
+in Jack's private sitting room where, only a few moments before, the
+afternoon mail bag had been brought in.
+
+"What is it, Frieda?" Jack asked, turning her head to glance over her
+shoulder in some surprise at her sister. She wondered if Frieda realized
+that she was fully aware of the way in which she had been watching the
+mail for these past few months. For Frieda had watched in vain for the
+particular letter which certainly she seemed to expect; even if she did
+not greatly desire it.
+
+"Oh, I have just received a note from a young soldier to whom I sent
+the first pair of socks I ever made," she returned. "He may not have
+originated the poem, but it is almost worth the trouble and the time
+I took on the socks. Do listen:"
+
+          "Thanks, dear lady, for the socks you knit;
+           Some socks, some fit.
+           I used one for a hammock and the other for a mitt.
+           I hope I meet you when I've done my bit,
+           But where in the h... did you learn to knit?"
+
+Then Frieda dropped the letter to wave another long grey sock, shot
+through with shining knitting needles. It was somewhat narrow in the
+ankle and bulged strangely at the heel.
+
+"I wonder if I am improving?" she inquired anxiously. The utilitarian
+nature of Frieda's occupation contrasted curiously with the general
+fluffiness of her appearance. For no amount of inward anguish could ever
+keep Frieda from the desire to wear pretty clothes and to make herself
+as attractive as possible. However, no one had any right to say she was
+unhappy, except as every one else was, through sympathy with the added
+troubles which the war had lately brought upon the world.
+
+Like most of the other women in the larger part of Europe and also in
+the United States, Jack and Olive were devoting all their energies to
+the work of the war. They had both taken short courses in Red Cross
+nursing and had organized clubs and classes in the neighborhood for
+every kind of relief work, while Frank had turned over several of his
+houses to the Belgian refugees.
+
+Therefore, only Frieda remained more or less on the outside of things.
+She had undertaken to learn to knit for the soldiers, but insisted that
+since her name meant peace and was a German name as well, she would do
+nothing more. The truth was she seemed not to wish to go out or mix with
+society a great deal, which was odd, as one of the reasons she had given
+for her unhappiness in her own home was that her husband wished to spend
+too much time there, so that she had become bored.
+
+However, Frieda had agreed to visit the poor people on the estate and in
+the neighboring village, in order to relieve Jack from this one of her
+many duties.
+
+Moreover, she enjoyed the odd types of old men and women, so unlike any
+other people whom she had ever before known, and she became a great
+favorite with them. Instead of giving her money for war purposes Frieda
+preferred bestowing it on these same queer old persons and the children
+who had been left behind.
+
+This afternoon, after she had finished reading the second of her two
+letters, the latter from Jean in Wyoming, Frieda got up from her chair.
+
+"Jimmie and I are going to drive down to the village to see old Dame
+Quick," she announced, "I promised to read to her this afternoon." 'Dame
+Quick' was the title Frieda had borrowed to give to the oldest woman in
+Granchester, because she was so extraordinarily lively.
+
+"What will you do with Jimmie while you read? He will never keep still,"
+Jack called, as Frieda moved toward the door.
+
+Frieda paused. "Oh, he and nurse will return back in the governess cart.
+I want to walk home. Don't worry if I am a little late," and before
+Olive or Jack would speak, she had disappeared.
+
+"I hope Frieda won't be too long. She does not know this country as I
+do," Jack murmured afterwards, but not thinking of the matter seriously.
+
+Frieda and Jimmie had a way of jogging in the little governess cart on
+many afternoons, sometimes taking the nurse with them and more often
+not. Jimmie was rather a troublesome small boy of an age when he was
+into every kind of mischief, and Frieda was not fond of children.
+Therefore, her family had wondered why she appeared to desire so much of
+Jimmie's companionship. Frieda might have answered that he asked so many
+questions that she did not have time to think of other things; however,
+she had never said this, even to herself.
+
+The governess cart was a little wicker carriage swung low on two wheels,
+with an ancient, shaggy pony, who never moved out of a slow trot.
+
+That afternoon, like all the great ladies in the English novels, Frieda
+stored away under the seat of her cart as much jelly and jam as her
+sister's housekeeper would allow her. At the nearest grocery shop she
+bought a package of tea, some tins of biscuits and a half pound of
+tobacco. For the truth was that Frieda's old woman liked a quiet smoke.
+This habit was not common among the villagers, but Dame Quick whose real
+name was "Huggins" was so very old that she allowed herself certain
+privileges.
+
+It was a dismal late fall afternoon, but English people and
+particularly English children do not stay indoors because of bad
+weather.
+
+Frieda wore a blue rain proof coat and a soft hat which she pulled down
+over her yellow hair, to keep the soft mist out of her eyes as well as
+she could. Jimmie and his nurse were also enveloped in mackintoshes.
+
+But the rain was not actually falling. There was only a November haze
+and a pervading dampness, making Jimmie's cheeks redder than ever and
+bringing more color than was usual to Frieda's face.
+
+On the way to the village Jimmie and his aunt, whom he regarded as of
+his own age, sang "America" in not a particularly musical fashion, but
+with a great deal of earnest effort, since Frieda was trying to teach
+the British Jimmie to be more of an American.
+
+Jimmie, of course, wished to go into Mrs. Huggins' cottage with his
+aunt, but on that point Frieda was resolute. She had a fancy for seeing
+her old friend alone this afternoon. Actually she had a reason which had
+been developing in her mind for the past twenty-four hours, although
+Frieda herself considered her reason nonsensical.
+
+In answer to her knock the old woman came to the door. She looked like
+one of the pictures one remembers in the Mother Goose books, and also
+like one of them, "she lived alone, all in her little house of stone."
+
+Dame Quick's cottage of two rooms was set in the middle of a long row of
+little stone houses, in one of the half a dozen streets in Granchester.
+Frieda always felt a shiver as she went inside, since the floor was of
+stone and there was a dampness about the little house as if it had never
+been thoroughly warmed inside by the sun.
+
+Yet Mrs. Huggins had managed to live there in contentment for about
+seventy years. She had come there as a bride before she was twenty and
+was now "ninety or thereabouts," as she described herself.
+
+When Frieda entered she bobbed up and down as quickly as an old brown
+cork on a running stream.
+
+"Sure, I've been waitin' and longin' for the sight of you these two
+hours," she said, taking Frieda's packages, or as many as she could get
+hold of, as if she thought them too burdensome for the young woman to
+carry.
+
+Frieda laughed and slipped out of her rain coat, which she hung
+carefully on a small wooden chair. Then she also laid her hat on the
+chair and, as a matter of habit, fluffed up her pretty hair which the
+rain and her hat had flattened, and then followed her old hostess.
+
+"You know you have had half a dozen visitors during the two hours you
+say you have been waiting, Mrs. Huggins," Frieda returned. For it was
+true that the tiny house and the old woman were the center of all the
+gossip in the village. "I expect you to tell me a lot of news."
+
+The old woman nodded.
+
+"It is true these are news days in England and elsewhere. Times were,
+when the days might be dull without a birth or a death, or a mating. But
+now one wakes up to something stirrin' every day--a lad goin' off to the
+war, or maybe one gettin' killed; and the girls coomin' in to tell me
+their troubles; some of them just married, and some of them not married
+at all yet. But all of them worryin' their hearts out. Sure, and if war
+is goin' on forever--and it looks like it is--I'm for the women goin'
+into battle along with their men."
+
+While she was talking Frieda had followed her hostess back into her
+kitchen--the room in which she really lived and had her being. It was
+also of stone, but the floor had a number of bright rag rugs as covering
+and the walls were lined with pictures cut from papers and magazines,
+and with picture postcards. One could have gotten a pretty fair
+knowledge of English history at the moment by studying Mrs. Huggins'
+picture gallery. She had on her walls a photograph of nearly every
+British officer then in command of the army or navy. She had replicas of
+innumerable battleships and also of statesmen. But in the place of honor
+over a shelf that held her Bible and a tiny daguerreotype of the late,
+lamented Mr. Huggins, hung a picture of England's big little man--Lloyd
+George. The aged woman received the old age pension which Lloyd George
+had given to the poor of England a few years before the outbreak of the
+present war.
+
+Frieda sat down on a little chair which lovers of antiques would have
+given much to possess. There was a small fire burning in the tiny stove,
+and its red coals looked more cheerful than the great log fire at Kent
+House.
+
+Frieda knew that Dame Quick would wish to prepare the tea herself.
+
+She had rather a happy feeling as she watched Mrs. Huggins, as if she
+had been a little girl who had gone out one day and grown suddenly tired
+and forlorn, and then been unexpectedly invited into the very
+gingerbread house itself. But a gingerbread house presided over by a
+good spirit, not an evil one.
+
+Her own little Dame Quick looked like a child's idea of an ancient good
+fairy. She may not have been so small to begin with, but at ninety she
+was bent over until she seemed very tiny indeed. Her face was brown and
+wrinkled and her eyes shone forth as black as elderberries in the late
+gathering time.
+
+She placed a small wooden table in front of Frieda and not far from the
+fire and her own chair. Then she got out some heavy plates and two cups
+and saucers. And whatever the difference in elegance, tea is never so
+good served in a thin cup as in a thick one. Afterwards she opened the
+package containing Frieda's biscuits and jam and finally poured boiling
+water into her own brown stone tea kettle.
+
+Then she and Frieda, sitting on opposite sides of the tea table, talked
+and talked.
+
+Several times, as she sat there, Frieda thought that if she had been an
+English girl she would like to have had just such an old nurse or foster
+mother as Mrs. Huggins. For she might then have been able to confide a
+number of things to her--matters she could not talk about even to her
+sister, since she was not clear enough how she felt concerning them
+herself, and so Jack might get wrong impressions.
+
+"But you have not told me any special news this afternoon," Frieda
+protested, having lifted her cup for a second helping of tea, and making
+up her mind that she could not think of herself while visiting, as she
+usually did at home. "My sister and brother always expect me to know
+something interesting after a visit to you."
+
+Dame Quick poured the tea carefully.
+
+"I don't care for gossip," she returned, "yet it seems as if they like
+it as much in big houses as in little." Her eyes snapped, so that Frieda
+found herself watching them, fascinated.
+
+"Since you came in I've been wonderin' whether certain information
+should be sent to Lord and Lady Kent. I don't think much of it myself,
+as there has been such a steady stream of spy talk these months past.
+But they are tellin' in Granchester that there is a man there who has
+taken a house a short distance from the village, on the road to Kent
+House. It seems he keeps to himself too much to please the village. He
+says he has been ill, and I'm sure has a right to a mite of peace if he
+wants it. It's only the village that's talking. Those higher up must
+know things are what they should be, since they don't bother him."
+
+Frieda was scarcely listening. Mrs. Huggins' news was often
+uninteresting in itself. It was only that she so much enjoyed repeating
+it.
+
+She had already finished her second cup of tea and was looking down at
+the collection of tea leaves in the bottom of her cup.
+
+"Suppose you tell my fortune," she suggested rather shyly. For some time
+past she had been thinking of just this. "Didn't you say you sometimes
+told the fortunes of the boys and girls in Granchester, and that a great
+many things you predict come true?"
+
+The old country woman looked at Frieda sharply.
+
+"I tell the fortunes, child, of boys and girls whose grandfathers and
+grandmothers I once knew. That isn't difficult fortune telling. I know
+certain tricks in the faces, I remember what their own people thought
+and did long before their day. Like father, like son; or maybe like
+mother, like son; and like father, like daughter. But you--" The old
+woman shook her head. "I know nothing about you, child; or your country,
+or your people, or what you have made of life for yourself with that
+pretty face of yours."
+
+Still Frieda held out her tea cup.
+
+"Oh, well; just let the tea leaves show you a little," she pleaded, in
+the spoiled fashion by which Frieda usually accomplished her purpose.
+
+Still the old peasant continued to look, not at the tea leaves but at
+her young companion. Perhaps she saw something with her fine, tired old
+eyes, that were too dim to read print, which even Frieda's own family
+did not see.
+
+"You have had too many of the things you wish without ever having to
+work for them, or to wait, little lady," she repeated slowly. Then she
+glanced down into the extended tea cup. "I think I see that you will
+have to lose something before you find out that you care for it. I also
+see a long journey, some clouds and at last a rainbow."
+
+Frieda put down her cup and laughed a little uncertainly.
+
+"Oh, the Rainbow Ranch is the name of my own home. I wonder if I have
+ever told you that?" she inquired. "But you are mistaken if you think I
+have had the things I wish." For, of course, Frieda did not believe she
+had been a fortunate person. So few people ever do believe this of
+themselves, until misfortune makes them learn through contrast.
+
+Later, she read a chapter in the Bible and the war news from one of the
+morning papers. Then, before six o'clock, she started to return to Kent
+House.
+
+Frieda walked quickly as the distance was not short. Moreover, she had
+never entirely recovered from the fright of her unexpected encounter
+with her husband several months before. Yet, since then, she had not
+only never seen him again, but never heard anything about him, except
+the scant information of his departure to France, which she had acquired
+through Frank Kent.
+
+Frieda did think--no matter what the difference between them--that her
+husband might have let her know that he was at least alive and well. Of
+course she was a selfish, cold-hearted person, as her family and
+undoubtedly her own husband believed her to be. However, one could be
+interested in the welfare of even a comparative stranger in war times.
+
+Later, after Frieda left the village, she passed by the little house
+which her old friend had tried to involve in a mystery in order to
+supply her with gossip. The house was set in a yard by itself. The
+lights were lighted and the curtains drawn down, but, as she hurried by,
+either a woman's or a man's figure made a dark shadow upon the closed
+blind.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+CHURCH AND STATE
+
+
+THE family and a number of the servants from Kent House were on their
+way to the small Episcopal church at the edge of the estate.
+
+Jack and Frank were walking in front, with Olive and Frieda strolling a
+little more slowly behind them, and the rest of the company followed in
+scattered groups.
+
+At the beginning of her marriage the English Sundays had been a trial to
+Jack. They were so much more quiet, so much more sedate than those of
+her rather too unconventional girlhood in Wyoming. Then they had
+sometimes held church in the open air, or if they wished to go into the
+nearest town, a big wagon was loaded with as many persons as could be
+persuaded from the ranch, and ordinarily they stopped on the way back
+and had lunch somewhere. Now and then Jack even remembered having ridden
+on her own broncho to the church door and fastened it on the outside,
+while she went in to the service in a costume which was an odd cross
+between a riding habit and a church outfit.
+
+But now, although the walk across Kent Park was only a short one, Jack
+was as correctly attired as if she were in London. Beside her brown
+velvet costume which was very smart and becoming, she wore a hat with
+feathers, which she particularly disliked. The hat was of the kind
+affected by Queen Mary of England, who always wears feather-trimmed
+hats.
+
+However, the mere matter of her hat would not have made Jack feel out of
+sorts, if she had not had another more potent reason. Frank was nearly
+always cross on Sunday mornings and this morning was no exception.
+
+It is strange that Sunday should have this effect on many persons, when
+one should be more cheerful than usual, and yet it does.
+
+Frank was really worn out with all his worries and responsibilities,
+Jack decided to herself, as she had a number of times recently. It was a
+privilege many people take advantage of, by saving their bad humors for
+their families.
+
+"But, Frank, I don't think you understand the situation in the United
+States," Jack argued, speaking good naturedly. "You see, we represent
+so many nationalities, so many differences of opinion and training, that
+we can't all think alike. The President is supposed to represent
+everybody."
+
+"Nonsense," Frank interrupted his wife not too politely. "The United
+States has been thinking about nothing but getting rich. They are a
+nation of shirkers, willing to stand back and let others do the work and
+suffer the loss."
+
+"There are a good many millions of us for us all to be shirkers, Frank,"
+Jack answered, still speaking quietly, although her cheeks had flushed
+and her eyes darkened.
+
+Really she and Frank tried very hard not to discuss any differences of
+opinion they felt concerning the war. During the last few years the
+marriages between men and women of different nationalities have had a
+great strain put upon them. At present, Frank as an Englishman, thought
+that the United States should immediately have gone in upon the side of
+the Allies, while Jack did not; and now and then they unfortunately fell
+into a discussion of the subject.
+
+Therefore, when they entered church this Sunday morning, neither Jack
+nor Frank were in a good humor toward each other. Jack felt that, as
+she was doing all she could in the service of his country, he should
+have made no unkind criticism of hers. Frank did not think at all,
+except to wish that Jack would refrain from argument. Certainly a man
+wished for peace in his own home when it was nowhere else. But it did
+not occur to Frank that it takes two to keep peace as well as two to
+make a quarrel; nor did he begin to realize how trying he had been at
+home during the past few months.
+
+As a matter of fact Frank was spoiled, as many Englishmen and some
+American men are. He had been an only son who was to inherit the family
+title, and his mother and sisters had always put him first in all
+things. It was true that when he came to the United States he had fallen
+in love with Jacqueline Ralston because, for one reason, she did not
+treat him differently at the beginning of their acquaintance from any
+cowboy on her ranch. That is, she was perfectly polite to him, when she
+remembered his existence; but then she was polite to everybody and
+recognized no social distinctions. She liked her own freedom, allowed
+other people theirs, and went her way untroubled by the opinion of
+others.
+
+But, at present--as is often the case with men after they marry--the
+very things in Jack which had attracted Frank before marriage annoyed
+him now. He believed she ought to be more influenced by his views. Of
+course, she ordinarily gave in to his wishes. However, he seldom felt as
+if she were convinced, but believed she yielded through sheer sweet
+temper.
+
+Moreover, Frank's irritability continued all day, so that several times
+after their return home, Jack found herself mortified before Olive and
+Frieda. Not that she minded so much about Olive, since Olive and Frank
+had always understood each other. But, as Frieda had announced herself
+as being disappointed with marriage, Jack did not wish her to think that
+her own was also a failure.
+
+After their midday luncheon on Sunday it was always Lord and Lady Kent's
+custom to walk over their estate during the afternoon, visit the stables
+and see as much of the condition of the place and the people on it as
+was possible.
+
+This Sunday afternoon Frank arose and started to go on his usual rounds
+without suggesting that Jack accompany him.
+
+However, she paid no attention to this, but followed him. Outdoors he
+changed into a better mood.
+
+There were not many horses left in the stables, as most of them were
+being used by the army. But when Jack and Frank went into the kennels,
+which adjoined the stables, a dozen great dogs began leaping over them
+at once.
+
+Frank drew a little aside to watch his wife.
+
+Jack stood in their midst laughing and protesting a little when one big
+hound stuck its great head, with wide open jaws and lolling tongue, too
+near her face. Yet she managed to make them all happy and quiet again by
+patting and stroking each one, or by calling each dog by name.
+
+"You are not afraid of anything in the world, are you, Jack?" Frank
+remarked admiringly, as they again got safely away from the kennels,
+Jack finding it necessary at the last moment to remove two large paws
+from her shoulders in order to settle a dispute between two of the other
+dogs.
+
+Jack laughed. "Goodness, Frank, what an extraordinary opinion you and a
+few other people have of me! I am one of the biggest cowards in the
+world about the things I am afraid of. I simply don't happen to be
+afraid of animals, as so many women are. And that is not a virtue, but
+because I was brought up with them."
+
+"I should like to know what you do fear, then?" Frank demanded.
+
+Instead of answering at once Jack slipped her arm inside her husband's.
+
+"I am dreadfully afraid of the people I care about being angry with me,
+though you and the rest of my family may not believe it, as I am
+supposed to have once been a wilful person," she returned unexpectedly.
+"Sometimes I wonder, Frank, just how much of a coward I would be, if I
+had either to give up what I thought was right or else to have some one
+seriously angry with me. I have not the courage of my convictions like
+Frieda."
+
+In response Frank uttered a half growl, which was not very complimentary
+to Frieda or her convictions. However, Jack went on almost without
+pausing.
+
+"I wonder, Frank, if it is fair to Frieda not to let her know what has
+happened to Professor Russell? Sometimes I have thought she has worried
+more over his silence than we imagine."
+
+Frank shook his head.
+
+"Frieda deserves whatever may come to her. It is an old-fashioned
+axiom, dear, but all the more true for that reason: Frieda has made her
+bed; now let her lie upon it."
+
+"But Frieda is hardly more than a child," Jack protested. "Besides, that
+is a pretty hard rule to apply to people. I don't think you and I would
+like to have it applied to us if we were ever in any difficulty."
+
+As it struck Frank as utterly impossible that he and Jack ever could
+have a disagreement, which could not be settled amiably in a few hours,
+he paid no attention to her last statement. Nevertheless he added:
+
+"After all, Jack, it is not for us to decide anything concerning Frieda
+and her husband. That is for them. We are simply doing what Professor
+Russell has requested of us."
+
+"Yes, but Frieda," Jack expostulated more weakly.
+
+"Frieda is receiving just what she asked for--silence. But you must not
+worry over Frieda. She will solve existence happily for herself soon
+enough. Almost any man would do anything and forgive anything in behalf
+of such blue eyes and yellow hair as Frieda's to say nothing of her
+Professor. I may pretend to be severe but I should probably forgive her
+as readily."
+
+"Sooner than you would me?" Jack inquired and laughed. "Oh, of course,
+you would. Everybody always has as long as I can remember."
+
+Frank looked more closely at his wife and his face softened until his
+eyes held their old expression of boyish admiration. Always he had been
+pleased by her intense loyalty to the people she cared for. It had made
+him forgive her in the past when she had some mistaken idea of loyalty
+toward Olive.
+
+"I am afraid you have had to do the forgiving recently, Jack. I expect I
+have been difficult. But I feel so torn these days wanting to be over in
+France doing the real work with fellows like Bryan, and at the same time
+wanting to be here with you and the babies and knowing I am perhaps more
+useful in London than I would be elsewhere."
+
+Jack's clear grey eyes were full of the spiritual understanding that had
+made her always so valuable a friend, and a woman must be a friend to
+her husband as well as other things.
+
+"I know, Frank," she answered, "but you are doing the right thing. If I
+didn't think so, no matter how I should suffer, do you believe for a
+moment that I would stand in your way?"
+
+And catching her look, Frank replied.
+
+"No, Jack, I don't; but I thank you for understanding."
+
+There were no letters delivered at Kent House on Sunday, but on each
+Sunday afternoon one of the men drove over to the post-office, which was
+open for an hour, and returned with the mail. It was important that Lord
+Kent should be kept in touch with every situation that arose, as there
+might be grave and tragic developments in the course of the hours he
+sometimes spent away from London.
+
+As he picked up the mail which was lying on the table in the hall as
+they entered, Frank extended a letter to his wife.
+
+"This is from Bryan, I believe, Jack. Do tell me what he says."
+
+They went into the library where Frieda and Olive were already waiting
+for tea to be served.
+
+Jack walked over to the fire and, before taking off her hat, read her
+letter through quietly.
+
+Then she looked up happily.
+
+"Bryan says he is all right and sends his love to the family, but more
+especially to his Lady Vive. He asks us all to write to him oftener if
+we can manage it, as we are his adopted family and he has no other.
+Frieda, he says your gift of socks is the most wonderful in all France.
+I actually believe Bryan is almost having a good time; but if he is not
+he is awfully brave."
+
+Making no effort to conceal her emotion, Jack's eyes suddenly filled
+with tears.
+
+"Gracious, Jack," Frieda exclaimed. "As long as there is nothing the
+matter with Captain MacDonnell, I wouldn't shed any tears over him. You
+so seldom cry, it always makes me wretched when you do. I'll bet Jack
+has never shed any tears over you, Frank."
+
+Frieda was not like a kitten in appearance alone. She had also soft
+little claws with which she scratched a tiny bit now and then. She had
+been entirely conscious that her brother-in-law considered that she was
+to blame in a large measure for her trouble with her husband, although
+he had never said so to her. Yet she had a desire to get a little bit
+even with him now and then.
+
+Frank's face did flush slightly, although he smiled good humoredly.
+
+"Oh, I am nothing but a civilian these days and Bryan is a soldier. I
+can't expect the same interest to be bestowed upon me, even by my own
+wife."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE LETTER
+
+
+AS soon as Jack saw Frank's face she realized that something tragic had
+occurred.
+
+She had come down to the train alone to meet him, but said nothing until
+they had walked away from the little crowd at the station into the gloom
+of the midwinter afternoon.
+
+"It is Bryan," Frank then exclaimed without waiting to be asked. "I had
+word from the War Office today that he had been mortally wounded."
+
+He put his arm about Jack to support her if she should turn faint, but
+this was not the way Jack received bad news.
+
+She stopped for a moment, standing straight, however, with her head up
+and her shoulders braced.
+
+"Are you sure, Frank, there can be no mistake?" she asked slowly.
+
+Lord Kent shook his head.
+
+"I am afraid not, dear. Bryan was leading a charge out of his trench
+when a shell hit him. His own men carried him back to a field hospital."
+
+[Illustration: HIS OWN MEN CARRIED HIM BACK TO A FIELD HOSPITAL]
+
+Jack and Frank then walked slowly on between the winter fields. The
+grass was still green as it remains almost all the year round in
+England, but the trees were stripped and bare, and there were no birds
+in sight, except a few melancholy crows, which in England are called
+rooks.
+
+Jack was recalling the day when she and Captain MacDonnell had taken
+their last ride together; also the smell of the blossoming hedges and
+her baby's blue ribbon on his sleeve.
+
+Since coming to England as a bride, she and Frank and Bryan had enjoyed
+a charming friendship. It was to Bryan, Frank had first introduced her,
+asking that he help to make her less homesick for the ranch and her own
+people.
+
+In those days Frank's sisters were still unmarried and Bryan had been in
+the habit of spending much of his time at Kent House when he was on
+leave.
+
+Yet Frank and Bryan were so utterly unlike in temperament. To say that
+Frank was an Englishman and Bryan an Irishman explains a great deal.
+Frank was quieter and more reserved and determined; but Bryan was ardent
+and emotional, quick to feel an emotion and quick to change. Jack had
+always felt that he loved the outdoors as she did, while Frank was
+studious, more devoted to books and to political questions than to swift
+action.
+
+At the same time Frank and his wife were thinking along similar lines,
+although his recollection of his friend went further back than hers. He
+remembered the small boy, whose mother had just died, coming to live
+with his old bachelor guardian in the queer little house which had since
+belonged to him. He also remembered how shy he had been and yet how
+often he had gotten into fights with other boys. But, more than
+anything, he recalled how Bryan had always seemed to long for the
+companionship of women and how happy he had been to come to Kent House
+and spend hours and days with his mother and sisters. This was one of
+the reasons why it had always seemed strange to Frank that his friend
+had never married.
+
+"But the news only said that Bryan was fatally hurt--not that things
+were over?" Jack asked after their long pause.
+
+"Yes; but I'm afraid he may be by now," Frank answered. "I have sent
+half a dozen cables for more news."
+
+Jack's grey eyes cleared a little.
+
+"Then I won't believe the worst until it really happens."
+
+On their arrival at home Olive and Frieda were sympathetic, but
+naturally could not care as much as Jack and Frank, since Captain
+MacDonnell was to them only a comparatively new acquaintance.
+
+But all evening Frieda watched her sister closely, whenever she had the
+opportunity without being observed. Only a few times before had she seen
+her with the same expression.
+
+Half a dozen or more of the neighbors came in after dinner to ask for
+further information concerning Captain MacDonnell, having heard the news
+only indirectly.
+
+But among them all Jack was the only one who appeared hopeful. She
+outwardly showed the effect of the anxiety and grief over their friend
+far less than Frank. But Frieda at least realized that courage was her
+sister's strongest characteristic.
+
+There had always been something gallant about Jack from the time she was
+a little girl--the carriage of her head; the look in her
+eyes--everything about her revealed this.
+
+And tonight Frieda appreciated the fact more clearly than any one else.
+There was no friend in the world so loyal as Jack; and no one more
+anxious to help those for whom she cared. Frieda knew that whatever else
+she might say during the evening, she was in reality thinking only of
+her husband's friend and her own, alone and dying, perhaps with no one
+near him for whom he cared.
+
+As early as possible Jack and Frank went upstairs together, since Frank
+showed the effect of the strain by being uncommonly tired.
+
+They had gone into their own rooms and Jack was slowly beginning to
+undress when an idea came to her; and she went at once into her
+husband's room.
+
+Frank, she found sitting on the side of his bed.
+
+"Bryan's letter, Frank," Jack remarked quickly. "Don't you think you
+ought to open it? He said that if anything happened to him you were to
+read it first, and afterwards I was to see the letter if you thought
+best. I remember he seemed much in earnest when he gave it to me."
+
+Frank frowned, and then shook his head.
+
+"Do you know I had forgotten, Jack? But I don't think Bryan meant us to
+disturb the letter until we know that the worst has happened to him and
+we don't know this yet; we only fear it."
+
+For a moment Jack was silent, but when she spoke again her voice and
+manner expressed a quiet firmness.
+
+"I think you are mistaken, Frank. There must be something in Bryan's
+letter that he wants us to do for him. It may be something that would
+come afterwards, but it also may be something that we could do for him
+now. Of course you must judge, but this is the way I feel about it."
+
+Jack, who had put on a deep violet toned velvet dressing gown over her
+underclothes, now sat down in an arm chair, leaning thoughtfully forward
+and resting her chin in the palm of her hand.
+
+She did not intend to influence her husband; but having expressed her
+own thought, she quietly awaited his decision.
+
+Frank, however, was worried and undecided. In order to think more
+clearly, he got up and began walking nervously up and down his room.
+
+"I don't know what to do, Jack," he argued. "If Bryan still lives he
+may, of course, recover and I would not then like to feel that I have
+pryed into his secret. On the other hand, you may be right and Bryan may
+have made some simple request of us which we could carry out for him at
+once. Bryan is a sentimental chap always. I wish, this time, he had been
+more explicit."
+
+Nevertheless, Frank must have finally decided to accept his wife's point
+of view for, after another few moments, he walked over to a small safe
+which occupied a corner in his room and opened it. Then he took out the
+box in which he had placed Captain MacDonnell's letter and the next
+instant had broken the seal and was reading its contents.
+
+Jack sat watching her husband's face, but offered no interruption.
+
+She saw Frank first look surprised and then saw him flush and at last
+his expression hardened curiously. He then presented her with the
+letter.
+
+"Read this, Jack. It is just as well that you should know what is in it.
+Bryan must have been considerably upset over his farewells and the
+thought of what might lie ahead of him, or he would never have made such
+a request of us. He must have realized afterwards that the thing is
+impossible."
+
+Jack read the letter, but there was nothing in it which seemed strange;
+certainly nothing impossible to her point of view. Bryan had simply
+requested that Frank allow her to come to him in case he was seriously
+injured. Bryan explained simply and boyishly that he had no women in his
+own family and that she was his closest woman friend. He had an absurd
+horror of dying with no woman near for whom he cared, or who cared for
+him.
+
+"I don't see what you find impossible, Frank," Jack answered, placing
+the letter inside the envelope and quickly returning it. "I was only
+waiting until we heard more news to ask you to let me go to Bryan, even
+if he had not made this request of us."
+
+Frank appeared distressed, but shook his head resolutely.
+
+"I don't want to seem unkind, dear. In a way it is pretty hard to refuse
+what Bryan asks. Only he could not have appreciated just how much he was
+asking."
+
+Jack brushed her hair back from her forehead with a puzzled gesture.
+
+"I don't understand what you mean, Frank. Certainly neither of us can
+dream of not agreeing. I know you will worry over the discomfort,
+perhaps even the danger of the trip to France for me. But hundreds of
+women have gone and are going every day to care for the soldiers who are
+entire strangers to them. Many times I have wanted to go myself before
+this, except for leaving you and my babies behind. But now I may only
+need to stay a little time."
+
+"We won't discuss the matter any further please, Jack," Frank protested,
+speaking gently, but with a decision which Jack recognized as having a
+serious intention back of it.
+
+Instantly she went to him and put her hands on his shoulders, looking
+directly into his blue eyes with her clear, wide grey ones.
+
+"Tell me your reason please, Frank. This isn't like you. You can't mean
+to be so selfish--even so cruel."
+
+Frank's eyes held his wife's, but he showed no sign, either of flinching
+or yielding.
+
+"I am sorry to have to say this to you, dear. I wish you could have been
+willing to do what I asked, without demanding my reason. But I can't let
+my wife go to Bryan; I can't let people think you and he care this much
+for each other. People would talk--there would be gossip. I am your
+husband and it is my place to safeguard you. You and Bryan never think
+of consequences--you are only impetuous children."
+
+"So you mean--" Jack let her hands drop slowly from her husband's
+shoulders to her own sides, "you mean, that because of a little idle
+chatter--foolish, unkind gossip--oh, I know some of the neighbors have
+already talked of Bryan and me before this--you would keep me from the
+friend we both care so much for, at a time like this? I can't believe it
+of you, Frank."
+
+"Then I am sorry to disappoint you, because I do mean it, Jack, dear. I
+suppose it does seem narrow and worldly to you, with your wider ideas of
+freedom and loyalty. But hard as this may be for us both, you must abide
+by my decision."
+
+For another moment Jack remained silent, her face flooding first with
+color and then the color receding until she was curiously pale, so that
+the darkness of her lashes showed shadows on her white cheeks.
+
+"I am sorry, Frank," she answered quietly, "but in this matter I can not
+accept your decision. I am a woman--not a child--and this is a matter
+for my conscience as well as yours. Even if I am wrong, whatever
+consequences I must suffer from your failing ever to see this as I do, I
+must go to Bryan if he is still alive."
+
+Then Jack went quickly into her own room again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+A SURPRISE
+
+
+DURING the night Frank decided that he would not argue with Jack again
+the question which was troubling them both, since it was too painful for
+discussion.
+
+However, he did not sleep much, although not once did his conviction
+that he was doing the right thing waver. Frank had the belief in his own
+judgment which comes to certain people with authority. Also, he disliked
+to suggest to his wife any of the little, ugly, suspicious things of
+life, which he knew her fine, clean nature would not consider. But all
+the more for this reason did he believe that he should protect her, even
+against herself.
+
+Therefore, at breakfast the next morning, Frank made no reference to
+Jack's final defiance the night before. Not for an instant did he think
+that she had meant anything, except to have him appreciate how utterly
+her point of view and her inclination differed from his. This he
+accepted, realizing that he really could not, under the circumstances,
+expect anything else. But that Jack would ignore his wish--even his
+expressed command--was beyond his comprehension. She had always been
+perfectly reasonable and amenable, and there was nothing to serve him as
+a warning.
+
+"I'll let you know as soon as I hear from the war office," Frank
+remarked, as he left for London.
+
+Jack simply nodded quietly in response without replying. As a matter of
+fact she, too, had made up her mind in the night not to reopen the
+subject upon which she and Frank were so completely at variance.
+
+Perhaps Jack was wrong in this and in the whole proceeding which
+followed. Except to say that she had the right to use her own
+judgment--she never attempted to justify herself.
+
+As soon as she had arranged her household matters and had seen her
+children, she went into her private sitting room and, by using her
+telephone for an hour or more, secured the information which she
+desired.
+
+She was able to locate Captain MacDonnell and also to learn that he was
+still alive. Moreover, Frank telegraphed this same fact while she was
+still at the telephone.
+
+Then Jack sent word for Olive and Frieda to come to her bedroom, and
+when they arrived she carefully closed the door.
+
+They found her packing a small bag.
+
+"What is it, Jack? Are you going up to London to join Frank?" Frieda
+inquired, she and Olive having been told nothing of the contents of
+Captain MacDonnell's letter, nor that there was such a letter in
+existence.
+
+Jack had taken off her morning dress and put on a light flannel wrapper
+of pale grey with a white collar, as she wished to proceed with her
+packing more readily.
+
+At Frieda's question she shook her head quietly and sat down in a big
+chair for a moment, asking Olive and Frieda also to be seated.
+
+"No; I am not going to Frank," she explained, "indeed, although I am
+forced to go up to London, I don't want him to know I am there, nor
+where he can find me for the next day or so. Afterwards I will, of
+course, write to him."
+
+Seeing that Olive and Frieda were becoming more mystified than
+enlightened by her explanation, and that she was in reality talking more
+to herself than to them, Jack hesitated for a moment.
+
+"Perhaps you won't approve what I am planning to do any more than Frank
+does," Jack continued, "but Captain MacDonnell has written to ask that I
+come to him in France where he may be dying, and I am going. Frank has
+said I must not, but I am going anyway. I told him so last night, but I
+don't believe he understood I really meant what I said."
+
+Jack spoke without any nervousness or sentimental excitement. She looked
+unhappy, but she also looked perfectly determined.
+
+A little too surprised to answer at once, Frieda again studied her
+sister's face closely.
+
+It was Olive who protested.
+
+"I hope you won't be angry with me, Jack, and of course I cannot hope to
+influence you if Frank cannot; but I don't think you ought to do so
+serious a thing without Frank's consent. In any case, please don't go
+away without his knowing. You must know that this is not right and that
+Frank will probably be very hurt and angry."
+
+Jack bit her lip for an instant without replying; then she said slowly,
+as if she fully weighed each word she uttered:
+
+"Of course I realize you are right, Olive, and I am afraid Frank will be
+both the things you say, and more than you may realize. I know, also,
+that I ought to see him again and tell him definitely just what I intend
+to do and why I intend doing it. But candidly, if I do, I fear that
+Frank will not permit it. He is not an American husband, and in any
+event there would be a scene between us. Frank would not understand at
+first that this time I intend to keep to my determination. We might
+quarrel and I don't wish that. It would make me even more unhappy and
+not save me in any way from Frank's displeasure."
+
+"But, Jack, why do you think it is more important to do what Captain
+MacDonnell desires of you than what Frank wishes?" Frieda inquired, in
+the cool, matter of fact voice with which she usually, to other people's
+surprise, asked the leading question.
+
+Jack did not change color. She returned her sister's look with her old
+clear, straightforward gaze.
+
+"I am glad you asked me that, Frieda, dear," she responded, "because I
+don't want you or anybody else to think that is true. Nothing is so
+important to me as what Frank wishes, only this time I think he is
+making a great mistake, and is not being fair. Of course he does not
+intend this, and is thinking of me more than of any one else, but at
+the same time this is not a matter which I think Frank can decide for
+me. His judgment may be right from his point of view, but it isn't from
+mine. I have to do what I think is the fair thing, with the hope that I
+may be able to persuade Frank to see it the same way later on."
+
+Olive made no response, but it was self evident that Jack had not
+convinced her.
+
+Frieda, however, got up in her fluffy morning house gown and making a
+soft little rush forward, threw her arms about her sister's neck.
+
+"Go ahead, Jack, then, and no matter what happens I'll stand by you and
+swear you've done the right thing to the bitter end. You have been more
+right than other people as long as I've known you. I would not pay any
+attention to Olive. I told you that Olive was getting to be an old maid
+and that old maids always take the men's side. Only you are not being
+rash, Jack, are you, so you won't have to suffer uncomfortable
+consequences afterwards?" Frieda concluded with a slightly plaintive and
+mysterious manner.
+
+"You'll look after my babies for me, won't you, Olive? And Frieda, won't
+you try and get Frank into a good humor with me before I come back? I
+shall be gone only a few days; perhaps Bryan won't need me at all when I
+arrive. I am going up to London within two hours, but I'll get away from
+there as soon as I can and take the first channel boat possible. I must
+finish packing, but I'll see you again before I start."
+
+As Jack's words and manner were both final, Olive and Frieda then left
+her. However, they did not separate but went together into Frieda's
+sitting-room.
+
+There Frieda's expression grew as grave as Olive's.
+
+"Somehow I wish Jack wouldn't. Maybe at the last moment she'll see Frank
+and change her mind," Frieda suggested, staring out at the winter
+landscape with her small nose pressed mournfully against the window pane
+like a discontented child. "I don't understand Frank's disposition very
+well. He is so different from Henry. Then he has changed a great deal.
+We never thought of his being autocratic when Jack married him, but he
+seems rather that way to me lately, though he is terribly nice and I am
+fond of him. I wouldn't be, though, if he was ever the least bit
+disagreeable to Jack. She is much too good for him or any other man.
+Isn't it like her to go rushing off in this quixotic fashion, knowing
+that lots of people will misunderstand her, just because Captain
+MacDonnell would like to feel her presence beside him, if anything has
+to happen to him? Well, I suppose that is exactly what I felt when I
+rushed to her the moment I left Henry? Only if Frank decides to be
+horrid it would be unfortunate for us both to be having trouble with our
+husbands at the same time. I suppose people would say it was because we
+did not have the proper bringing up when we were children."
+
+"Don't be absurd, Frieda," Olive answered irritably. "Of course, Frank
+and Jack are not going to have any serious difficulty. She and Frank are
+quite different--"
+
+Frieda swung her pretty self around.
+
+"Don't you ever get tired of saying that to me, Olive Van Mater? Of
+course Jack is different, but I don't see that Frank is entirely unlike
+other men. Oh, I know you'll be shocked and angry at this and so would
+Frank and Jack, if they ever heard; but just the same I think Frank Kent
+is a little bit jealous of Jack's friendship for Captain MacDonnell. He
+would rather die than confess it to himself. I at least give him the
+credit for not knowing it, but it's true just the same."
+
+"I think that is very horrid of you, Frieda."
+
+Frieda shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"Yes, I thought you would think so. Still, I do wish it was a whole week
+from today and Jack was safely home again. I am frightened about her
+taking such a trip alone; and as for my attempting to get my
+brother-in-law into a good humor after he learns that his august
+Highness has been disobeyed--well, the task is beyond my humble powers.
+In any case, Olive, you can break the news of Jack's departure to him."
+
+But Jack spared both her sister and friend this ordeal. Instead, she
+wrote a very sweet letter to her husband, asking his pardon for what she
+was doing and confessing that she had no right not to have spoken of her
+intention to him again. But would he see that she must do what she
+believed to be right, and that Bryan might not be able to wait while
+they continued to argue the question?
+
+She left the letter on Frank's bureau.
+
+Not finding Jack in the library that evening, where she usually awaited
+his return home, Frank had gone directly upstairs, and when she was also
+not in her room, he entered his apartment. The letter caught his
+attention at once, but even then Lord Kent had no faintest idea of what
+Jack's letter contained. He supposed she had gone out on some errand and
+had written to explain that she might be late.
+
+When he had finished reading, he quietly tore her letter into small bits
+and flung the pieces upon the fire.
+
+Afterwards, going downstairs to dinner, he said to Olive and Frieda.
+
+"Jack has written me a note telling me that she has gone to France. You
+both probably know I did not wish her to go. Please let us not speak of
+this matter again."
+
+And though there was really nothing in what Frank said, neither Olive
+nor Frieda liked his expression or manner.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+NO QUARTER
+
+
+DURING the time of Jack's absence, Frank Kent passed through a strange
+state of mind, one which he did not himself understand. He was both
+angry and miserable. Resentment against another human being is always
+folly, since one suffers as much, if not more than the other person.
+
+However, Frank did not answer a single one of Jack's letters, although
+she managed to write him several times, telling of her safe arrival, of
+the kindness which had been shown her along the way, and of Captain
+MacDonnell's recognition of her and his pleasure in finding an old
+friend near him. Jack also wrote that there was hope of his partial
+recovery, but that he would probably be unable to fight again. She would
+be able to tell more on her return home.
+
+Two weeks after the day of her departure, Jack came back to Kent House.
+She had telegraphed when she reached British soil so that her family
+knew when to expect her. Frank was not at home when she arrived, so she
+saw her children and Olive and Frieda first. Then, after dressing for
+dinner, she went down into the library alone to wait for her husband.
+
+Jack was very tired from the strain of her trip and from the sights she
+had witnessed in the past fourteen days. She felt as if she were
+entering a new world in coming back tonight to her home in the peaceful
+Kentish country. Whatever human beings might be suffering inwardly,
+there were at least no changes in the tranquillity of the blue hills and
+the gentle, mist-veiled English landscape.
+
+It had required an effort for Jack to dress, but she did not know in
+what spirit Frank would meet her and did not wish to have him think she
+was too much exhausted by the experience which she had wilfully chosen
+for herself. She feared that Frank was still aggrieved, because of his
+not having written or sent her a message of any kind, and yet she rather
+hoped the reunion with her and the news she brought back would soften
+him.
+
+Partly because of her fatigue, partly because it seemed impossible to
+wear gay clothes after those days and nights in the hospital, Jack had
+put on a black satin gown which she had had some time. It was made
+simply as her evening clothes always were, but the black tulle which
+covered it was caught with jet ornaments on each shoulder and loosely
+belted in at the waist, falling in beautiful lines to her feet. At her
+belt Jack wore a golden rose which the old gardener had brought up to
+the house as a special offering. The rose had bloomed that morning in
+one of the greenhouses. Jack's hair was coiled closely about her small
+head, and she had less color than usual.
+
+She was resting in one of the big library chairs with her eyes closed,
+when she heard her husband enter the hall, and after making some
+inquiry, move toward the library door.
+
+At this she rose up at once and ran forward with her arms outstretched
+to meet him, her face glowing with happiness.
+
+"Oh, Frank, I am so glad to be at home again. It has all been so
+distressing. Poor Bryan is going to get well, but I fear he will hate it
+when he does, for he may never walk again. He does not know this yet."
+
+Frank turned his eyes so that he could not see Jack's beauty nor
+appreciate her warm sweetness so close beside him.
+
+"I am horribly sorry for Bryan," he replied. But he made no effort to
+kiss Jack or to express the least pleasure in her return. Instead, he
+walked away a few steps and began taking off his overcoat, which he had
+not removed before.
+
+"You are still angry with me, Frank?" Jack queried, though the question
+was scarcely a necessary one. "You have not yet seen that I had the
+right to judge for myself in this thing about Bryan? After all, what
+possible wrong have I done? And I did give Bryan pleasure; he does not
+dream, of course, that I went to him without your consent."
+
+Although Frank still remained silent, Jack's sweetness did not desert
+her. She followed after him, in spite of the fact that he had turned his
+back upon her.
+
+"After all, Frank, even if you do continue to disapprove of me and to
+think I did wrong to disobey you, won't you make friends with me? Please
+say I'm forgiven?"
+
+At this Jack smiled and stood with her hands clasped together against
+the soft, black folds of her dress.
+
+In fact, she had not yet appreciated the extent of Frank's anger against
+her, nor the unbending quality of his nature. Though they had been
+married a number of years, this was the first serious difficulty between
+them. Jack had too great an admiration for her husband, too deep a
+belief in him, to think that he could continue to sulk and to hurt her
+through a kind of stupid obstinacy.
+
+And for a single instant Frank did hesitate, but the next he made up his
+mind that unless Jack was made to realize the extent of his displeasure
+she would probably never yield to him again. He honestly believed that
+he had the right to be the master in his own family.
+
+"I presume, Jack, that you consider it a very simple matter for me to
+say I forgive you and to overlook your utter disregard of my wishes, and
+your deception in the matter. But I cannot see the thing in that light.
+You have not only wounded me, but you have made me ridiculous. To say I
+forgive you, or feel as I did before would not be the truth."
+
+"Very well, Frank," Jack answered quietly and went out of the room.
+
+A little later she came down to dinner, revealing no sign of what had
+taken place between herself and her husband and hoping that Frieda and
+Olive would not guess that she was still unforgiven. Frank's manner was
+perfectly polite and they talked freely of Captain MacDonnell and of the
+tragedy of his recovering only to find his work as a soldier ended.
+
+Afterwards, Jack excused herself early in the evening, because, of
+course, she had every reason to feel weary.
+
+But even if Frieda and Olive did not grasp the situation at once, they
+could not continue to remain long in ignorance, for Jack and Frank did
+not return to their old intimacy and devotion.
+
+But, as the days went on, this was, perhaps, as much Jack's fault as her
+husband's.
+
+Never before had she ever made an overture to any human being who had
+not responded. Moreover, she could not tell Frank that she was sorry for
+what she had done, for she was not sorry, nor did she regret her own
+action. She was merely disillusioned concerning her husband.
+
+Always Jack had said that she had more of the Indian in her than Olive
+ever had, in spite of Olive's upbringing. By this she meant that for one
+thing she could hide better the things that hurt her. Yet in a way she
+was difficult for anyone to approach on an intimate subject at this
+time, certainly neither Olive nor Frieda made any mention that they saw
+her continuing trouble with Frank.
+
+Unconsciously Jack held her head up before people unfailingly. No
+outsider would have guessed at any change. Only those who cared for her
+deeply realized how she was hurt by Frank's attitude.
+
+Several times it occurred to Frank that perhaps he and Jack were making
+a mistake to allow their estrangement to go on too long. The next time
+his wife asked his pardon Lord Kent had concluded to forgive her.
+
+Moreover, he and Frieda had an interview which annoyed and amused him,
+but which he did not forget then, or ever afterwards.
+
+It was one Sunday afternoon in early March, an unexpected spring-like
+day, and he and Frieda were taking a motor ride together. They had only
+one small car on the estate, having sent the large one to be turned into
+an ambulance.
+
+After their midday dinner Frank had found himself in need of diversion,
+Olive and Jack having explained that they were going to see a friend who
+was ill. And as a matter of fact Frieda diverted Frank from serious
+affairs more than any other grown up person he knew and consequently he
+fell in readily with her suggestion for the ride. He had not the
+faintest idea that she was not in a friendly mood toward him, for Frieda
+had wisely concealed the fact, although in reality she was thoroughly
+enraged.
+
+It seemed to her that Frank's treatment of Jack was almost unpardonable.
+It is true that she, perhaps, had rather an exaggerated opinion of her
+sister's virtues, but then Jack had been a kind of mother to her always.
+Although they quarreled a little now and then, as most sisters do, it
+was beyond Frieda's comprehension that anyone could believe Jack would
+wilfully do wrong, or be forced to suffer the consequences. Moreover,
+what Frieda still thought of as her own "misfortune" made her
+particularly "touchy" at present.
+
+However, she and Frank started off cheerfully, Frank admiring an
+especially pretty bright blue motor coat and small close fitting blue
+silk hat, which Frieda had purchased in New York a few days before
+sailing. Nevertheless Frieda had already planned to have a talk with
+Frank before their return and only awaited the proper opportunity.
+
+She was quiet at first, allowing her brother-in-law to tell her stories
+about the country and his neighbors, stories in which she was really not
+much interested. But Frieda smiled and answered, "yes and no," at the
+proper times, and this was what Frank really wished. Most men would
+rather talk intimately to women than to other men and Frank had missed
+his long hours of conversation with Jack more than he appreciated.
+
+Yet Frieda's inattention finally forced itself upon his notice, so that
+her brother-in-law turned and smiled at her.
+
+"What are you thinking about, Frieda? Certainly not of what I just said
+to you."
+
+Frieda turned her large blue eyes with their heavy golden lashes half
+veiling them toward her companion.
+
+"Still I was thinking of you, Frank," she answered, smiling, "and that
+is the attention men like best, isn't it?"
+
+Lord Kent laughed. "Perhaps as a matter of vanity, yes, Frieda? But of
+course a good deal depends upon what one is thinking. What were you
+thinking of me?"
+
+"Oh, only how unlike you and Henry are," she replied sweetly.
+
+However, Frank understood something of her hidden meaning, for he
+flushed.
+
+"Well, considering the fact that you didn't find it possible to continue
+to live with 'Henry,' I suppose I ought to be flattered. Only as a
+matter of fact, Frieda, I admire Professor Russell very much."
+
+This time Frieda flushed, realizing that Frank had scored.
+
+"Yet even though that is true, Frank, Henry never took the tone with me
+of insisting that he was always right and I was always in the wrong. Do
+you know, Frank, I am beginning to think--oh well, Henry was never so
+horrid to me as you are to Jack. He isn't a bit of a bully."
+
+"So you think I am 'horrid' to Jack and a bully besides, do you,
+Frieda?" Frank returned grimly. He was angry, but not as angry as he
+felt he had the right to be. Somehow he could not manage to get into a
+violent state of mind with his youthful sister-in-law.
+
+Frieda nodded energetically in response, without appearing the least bit
+frightened.
+
+"Of course you are going to think I am interfering, Frank, and no one
+ever pays any real attention to what I say, but I just thought I'd tell
+you anyhow. You are making a big mistake. Of course I realize that you
+are not so silly as not to appreciate Jack, but I don't believe you
+have ever thought what it might mean to lose her. You see she isn't like
+most women, she really does not know how to quarrel for any length of
+time. But when she was hurt or seriously angry as a girl she used to
+keep still for a long time not saying a word. Then she used to do
+something unexpected." Frieda's voice shook a little with stronger
+feeling than she often showed.
+
+"I've been afraid lately that Jack might do something queer now,
+something no one of us dreams she would think of doing. She is so very
+unhappy. You remember, Frank, don't you, what a long time it took you to
+win Jack? I wonder if it might not take you even longer to win her back
+again!"
+
+Frank stiffened. "I cannot discuss my relations with Jack, even with
+you, Frieda. That is a matter between us alone."
+
+Frieda nodded pensively.
+
+"Certainly I appreciate your point of view, Frank, from my own sad
+experience."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE BREAK
+
+
+BUT Frank did give careful consideration to what Frieda had said to him.
+Her words came as a kind of revelation. Suddenly he began to appreciate
+what it would mean to lose Jack, though of course there was no
+possibility of such a thing. She was one of the most loyal persons in
+the world and they had only had a difference of opinion.
+
+Yet Frank decided that it would be best to let bygones be bygones and to
+mention the fact to Jack at the first possible opportunity.
+
+But somehow he seemed to have to wait for the opportunity to arrive;
+certainly his wife did nothing to help him.
+
+One night, coming home at the usual hour, Frank discovered that Jack was
+not there. She had gone out a little before lunch on some errand, as
+Olive and Frieda supposed, but leaving no word except that they were not
+to wait luncheon for her.
+
+Frieda and Olive, Frank found, were both a little uneasy. He laughed at
+the idea. Jack had a great many things to attend to in the neighborhood
+and knew everybody, while everybody knew her.
+
+Afterwards, he went upstairs to the nursery and stayed half an hour
+watching Vive and Jimmie being put to bed. When he came down to the
+library to read, twilight was falling. But instead of reading Frank
+found himself turning over the pages of the magazines, gazing at them,
+and not knowing a word of their contents.
+
+In a few moments it would be dinner time.
+
+He got up and walked nervously up and down the room.
+
+If Jack did not come in by dinner or send a message what would it be
+wise to do?
+
+A few moments later he telephoned two or three places where he thought
+Jack might have remained later than she realized. But she had not been
+at any one of the houses during the day, and naturally Frank did not
+wish to ask too many questions, since she might return home at any
+moment. It would then appear absurd to have started false rumors, or to
+have created anxiety among their friends.
+
+When the butler came in to announce dinner, Lord Kent explained that
+Lady Kent was not yet at home and that dinner be kept waiting for
+another half an hour.
+
+Soon after Frieda joined him.
+
+"I know I am silly, Frank," she confessed, "but I am worried. If Jack
+had gone out on horseback, one might understand that she could have
+gotten some distance away. But she did not ride, she walked, and could
+not have continued walking since before noon."
+
+"You are an infant, Frieda," Frank remarked. "Of course Jack has been
+paying visits and has stayed too long. But perhaps I had best go and
+look for her, unless she has found a friend to act as an escort it is
+too late for her to be out alone."
+
+"But where are you going to look?" Frieda questioned. And either her
+brother-in-law did not hear her, or preferred to pretend he did not,
+since he made no reply.
+
+The fact of the matter was he had no plan. He thought it was rather
+absurd for him to look at all, but had suddenly been overtaken with a
+sense of uneasiness, a strange foreboding of disaster. We all yield to
+these sensations now and then, but as they were not usual with Lord Kent
+he was the more uncomfortable.
+
+He could not even decide whether it would be wiser for him to ride or to
+walk, but concluded he had best ride, in order to cover a greater
+distance in a shorter time.
+
+He searched very carefully for Jack down the long road which divided the
+estate. And naturally he remembered the other evening, not so very many
+months ago, when he had ridden down this same avenue peering through the
+rain for her and Captain MacDonnell. Then he had discovered both of them
+with but little difficulty.
+
+Tonight Frank wished that he felt sure Jack had someone with her to take
+care of her, as she had on that other evening. He would not then have
+felt so ridiculously worried.
+
+"Poor Bryan, one did not like to allow oneself to think of him too often
+these days, yet he must be brought back home as soon as possible," Frank
+thought. Some time ago he had decided that when the time came he would
+himself go for Bryan. Perhaps this would be partly an act of expiation,
+although Lord Kent had not said this to himself, or to his wife.
+
+This evening he rode directly into the village, but although it was only
+a little after eight o'clock, Granchester had long practiced the
+daylight saving habit, not because of the war, but because of a fixed
+habit of early sleep and early rising. There were only two or three
+scattered lights in the little stone houses and only a few old men
+outdoors talking together in front of a closed public house.
+
+Nevertheless Frank rode up to the home of Frieda's old friend and
+dismounted, for he had known Mrs. Huggins many long years. She was
+accepted by everybody as a kind of unprinted village newspaper. If Jack
+had been in Granchester during the afternoon, Mrs. Huggins would know
+just where she had been and what she had done.
+
+The old woman's light was out, but a moment after his knocking she
+opened her door. In her hand she held a lamp and her old eyes shone
+through the half darkness.
+
+She was probably excited by the idea that someone had come to confide a
+piece of news to her.
+
+However, she had heard nothing of Lady Kent's having been in the village
+during the day, and was in fact sure she had not been there.
+
+When Lord Kent went away, however, she still seemed to think he had
+brought her news.
+
+"There is trouble in the big house, also," she said to herself, wagging
+her old head. "Funny how when trouble of one kind gets loosed in the
+world, so many other kinds follow it." Even after she had gone back to
+bed she still kept thinking of Kent House.
+
+Later, just before he was leaving Granchester, Frank telephoned to his
+home.
+
+Frieda came to the telephone to say that no word had yet come from her
+sister.
+
+Nevertheless Lord Kent could not make up his mind to ask for aid in his
+search. He had a curious antipathy toward it, as if Jack herself would
+not like this, as if in some way it might lead to a revelation they
+would not wish others to share.
+
+This was what made all his efforts so difficult. For each added moment
+he was becoming more and more worried, and yet having to pretend that
+Jack's failure to return home, her failure to send any word of her
+whereabouts, was the most casual thing in the world.
+
+There were several places belonging to friends and not far from the
+village. Lord Kent stopped by at each place for a few moments, as if he
+were making an ordinary visit, but of course to find out if Jack had
+called during the day. Apparently no one of her friends had seen her.
+
+At Captain MacDonnell's home, Frank inquired for the housekeeper. Mrs.
+Naxie was still in charge and she and Frank were old friends. She had
+been with Captain MacDonnell's uncle years before when he and Bryan were
+both little boys.
+
+Lord Kent was not ashamed to reveal his anxiety to Mrs. Naxie, and she
+at least had a little information for him, the first he had secured.
+
+"Yes, Lady Kent had stopped by a little before tea time and had seemed
+tired. She explained that she had eaten no lunch, but enjoyed her tea,
+and then started away again. Mrs. Naxie was under the impression she
+intended going directly home.
+
+"There was nothing more for him to do but to go home also," Frank then
+concluded. If Jack had not returned and nothing was known of her, he
+must throw away his scruples and ask for help.
+
+It was now fully night and the sky filled with high, sweet stars.
+
+Although he yearned to be at home at once, still Frank searched all the
+roads, stared behind the tall hedges, and now and then in the darkness
+called his wife's name. Nevertheless he continued to assure himself that
+he was behaving like a fool and there was no real reason for him to feel
+so alarmed. He had always been ridiculously nervous about Jack and
+always before now she had laughed at him.
+
+It was not until he had almost reached the beginning of his own land
+that Frank was finally honest with himself. He had fought against
+confessing the fact that he was to blame every moment since he first
+began to grow uneasy about Jack. Had they been good friends these past
+few weeks he knew he would not have been half so miserable. Whether he
+had been right or wrong, he had realized that Jack had been anxious to
+make peace and he had repulsed her. He would wait for no comfortable
+opportunity now, as soon as he found his wife, they must be reconciled.
+
+Near the edge of Kent Park, where the land dipped, there was a small
+stream, deep in some places, and yet hardly to be dignified by the title
+of river.
+
+Yielding to an impulse Frank got off his horse here and walked slowly
+along the bank. The stream was so narrow he could see almost equally
+well on the farther side.
+
+The trees and underbrush made shadows on the surface where the water was
+deepest.
+
+Suddenly Frank thought he saw one of the slender, young birches move a
+step toward him. The next he heard Jack's voice say:
+
+"Frank, is that you?"
+
+Then she came slowly toward him.
+
+The strange fact was that she did not appear surprised, nor did she
+begin by offering any explanation of her own strange behavior, nor why
+she should be found at such an hour in such a place.
+
+"Sit down for a little while will you please, Frank? The ground is not
+particularly damp in some places, I have been sitting here a long time."
+
+Frank made no reply except to do what she liked. He knew that something
+had happened which was of tremendous seriousness to Jack. If that were
+true, then whatever it was, was equally so to him.
+
+"You are not ill, are you, dear?" he inquired, after he had let go his
+bridle and taken a seat beside his wife. His horse would only wander
+about near by.
+
+Jack shook her head.
+
+"I was dizzy and very tired a little while ago, I don't know just how
+long. I sat down here to rest and fell asleep for a time. I am quite all
+right now." And indeed Jack was now speaking in a natural voice. One
+must remember it was not so unusual for her, as it would be with most
+other girls and women, to take her problems outdoors when she wished to
+solve them.
+
+"There is something I want to say to you, Frank. I have been making up
+my mind to speak of it for some time. This afternoon I knew I had to
+decide. I went off for a long walk and now I have decided."
+
+Jack was sitting very still a few feet away from her husband. He now
+moved over and put his arm about her, but though she made no movement to
+resent it, she showed no sign of pleasure or of yielding.
+
+"I want to go home, Frank?" she continued.
+
+And for an instant believing she meant Kent House, Frank started to
+rise. The next he understood his mistake.
+
+"I mean I want to go back to the Rainbow ranch to see Jim and Ruth and
+Jean, but Jim most of all," she added, this time with a little break in
+her usually steady voice.
+
+"Please don't answer, Frank, until I have explained to you a little
+better. I know it seems horrid to leave you alone and to take the babies
+away, when you are so worn out with your work and so sad over all the
+wretched tragedy of the war. You will miss the babies, even if you will
+not particularly miss me. Still I'll have to go, Frank. I can't live on
+with you not forgiving, not caring for me any more. I won't stay long
+unless you wish it and I'll come back whenever you send for me. But I
+must go; it has seemed to me lately as if I could not breathe."
+
+Jack turned her face directly to her husband, and although it was too
+dark to see it distinctly, he could catch the dim outline.
+
+"You see until lately I never dreamed that when things came to a crisis,
+to a question of right, to a question of my judgment, or my conscience,
+you would not be willing to let me do as I decided and thought best. I
+knew you liked me to follow your way in little things and I never minded
+most times. Often I was glad to do as you wished and when I didn't agree
+to your way, I never considered the fact seriously one way or the other.
+But lately I have seen that if we go on living together, I have got to
+be a coward, a kind of traitor to myself by always appearing to agree
+with you, or else live with you and have you angry and dissatisfied with
+me. I cannot bear either. Marriage does not mean that to me, Frank. I
+have to get away for a little while to see if I can find out what I
+should do."
+
+There was no sign of anger in Jack's manner, if she had been feeling
+angry lately, and of course she had being perfectly human, her anger had
+disappeared tonight during the long hours she had been thinking things
+out alone.
+
+Sitting beside his wife, suddenly as she finished speaking Frank
+recalled something Frieda had lately said to him. Perhaps Frieda had
+more brains than her family and friends realized. However, what she had
+said was that whenever she was angry or wounded, her sister Jack was apt
+to go off to herself and then do something unexpected.
+
+Surely his wife's request tonight was wholly unexpected.
+
+But Frank only answered, not revealing what he felt, nor what he
+intended.
+
+"I think this is a pretty severe punishment, Jack, if you think I am
+unfair. But you must let me take you home to Kent House now; Olive and
+Frieda are both dreadfully worried to know what has become of you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+PROFESSOR AND PROFESSORESS
+
+
+WHEN it was finally decided that Jack was to go home to the Rainbow
+ranch with her babies and Olive and Frieda for a visit, Frieda
+strenuously objected. No reason was given her by her sister except the
+ordinary one, that Jack wished to get away from the sad atmosphere of a
+country at war and also to see her family.
+
+"Certainly you don't show much consideration for Frank," Frieda
+protested when she first heard the news. "It seems to me that England is
+_his_ country and he has a good deal more work to do and goes through a
+lot more than you do, Jacqueline Ralston. I never could make up my mind
+to leave my husband under such circumstances."
+
+Then although Jack flinched, she did not make the reply she might so
+obviously have made.
+
+However, Frieda went on just as if she had.
+
+"I know what you are thinking of, but it was quite different with Henry
+and me. He did not need me, he thought I was a butterfly and my wishing
+to go out and dance and do exciting things disturbed his work. He didn't
+allow me to go with other people because he thought it was his _duty_ to
+look after me. He said so, said I was too young to be expected to take
+care of myself. He wasn't a bit jealous like Frank, I shouldn't have
+minded a jealous husband. If I said he was jealous, I was only
+pretending because I wanted to seem interesting."
+
+"Frank jealous?" Jack laughed. "You are too silly, Frieda."
+
+Nevertheless Frieda tossed her yellow head, but also flushed a little,
+having said more than she intended. If Frank did not know he was jealous
+of Captain MacDonnell and Jack was also unaware how much this had
+unconsciously influenced his decision concerning his friend's request,
+it was not her place to tell them.
+
+"Just the same you'll be sorry and ashamed of yourself some day, Jack
+Ralston. You need not pretend anything to me, I understand the present
+situation perfectly. Frank was rather horrid to you and he ought not to
+be allowed to be a bully, but you could really twist him around your
+finger if you tried. You can now at any rate because he adores you. And
+Frank is pretty nice you know, most women would be glad to have him.
+After all he has a title and money, and men are going to be scarce when
+this war is over."
+
+"Frieda!" Jack exclaimed in such a tone of disgust that Frieda departed
+hastily, if still gracefully, out of her sister's room.
+
+However she stopped at the door.
+
+"You know it will look perfectly absurd for us both to go back home
+without husbands," Frieda tossed out. "I didn't mind half so much when
+Frank was around and there was at least one man in our family. But of
+course it looks now as if we had something the matter with us, horrid
+dispositions, so that no man could make up his mind to live with us."
+
+This time Jack betrayed herself a little more by showing anger.
+
+"You have no right to assume I am behaving as you did, Frieda, because I
+want to go to the old ranch for a time. Frank has given me his consent,
+I've no idea of running away."
+
+Then, as Frieda burst into tears at the allusion, Jack had to draw her
+small sister back into her room from the doorway, and do what she could
+to apologize and console her.
+
+She felt rather a hypocrite, too, because after all Frieda was not so
+far wrong in some of her suppositions, and she had had no right to
+pretend to superiority.
+
+There was at this time no danger to passenger vessels through
+submarines, so that it was arranged for the travelers to leave for the
+United States early in April that they might spend the spring at the
+Rainbow Ranch.
+
+Olive was anxious to go. She had not intended remaining in England so
+long, and wished to take up some course of study at home, to return
+later when she might make herself more useful.
+
+Jack was torn between her desire to make a visit to her own home, to get
+away for a breath of freedom and the chance to decide what she ought to
+do in the future when Frank opposed her right to decide important issues
+for herself and the thought that, perhaps, Frieda was right and that she
+was not playing fair in leaving her husband at so trying a time. But
+Frank had not opposed her going, had really said he thought it might be
+a good thing, and she did not know whether he meant this from her
+standpoint or from his own. It might be that Frank also would enjoy a
+certain relief from the presence of a wife who would not trust his
+judgment. Certainly Frank's affection had never seemed the same since
+that time. He had been wonderfully good in agreeing to her new wish, but
+there were moments when, womanlike, Jack wondered if she would not have
+liked it better had he shown more opposition.
+
+So there was only Frieda who unqualifiedly stormed against leaving. Of
+course she put it all on disapproving of her sister's action, but
+naturally her family wondered if the fact that Frieda wished to be near
+her husband, whom she believed to be fighting in France could have
+anything to do with her point of view. However, no one dared to make
+this suggestion to her. It would have done no good in any case since she
+would probably have promptly denied it.
+
+However, Frieda would not remain in England without her sister and Jack
+was unwilling that she should. Nevertheless, insisting on maintaining
+the attitude of an aggrieved character, Frieda separated herself from
+her own family whenever she could.
+
+Twice a week for instance she went into Granchester to tea with Mrs.
+Huggins. Frieda had a private reason for this. One day she had
+overlooked the fact that her own "Dame Quick" had not been her nurse or
+foster mother and had confided to the old woman some of the things which
+were troubling her. She did not want advice, what she wanted was to say
+those things aloud which she had been saying to herself, and she knew
+her old friend would simply listen and be kind to her. One might think
+she would have feared that the old woman, with her passion for spreading
+news, would have gossiped about her, but Frieda knew better than this.
+
+One afternoon, about ten days before their sailing time, Frieda started
+off alone to walk to Granchester. She was earlier than need be since
+Olive had asked her a question which had offended her and she had been
+irritable. She thought she had caught the suggestion of a lecture in her
+sister's expression and so had hurried off before Jack had a chance to
+speak.
+
+Frieda recognized the fact that she was a little difficult to live with
+these days. But then she excused herself by saying that no one knew how
+worried and nervous she was. There were times when Frieda was afraid she
+might be losing her prettiness through worry, until her mirror reassured
+her. For Frieda understood her own appearance, just as she understood a
+great many things. She knew that Jack had developed into a beauty from a
+merely handsome girlhood and that she was only pretty. But she also
+realized that prettiness often makes more appeal, especially to men,
+than a higher type of loveliness. Therefore, Frieda had no idea of not
+preserving her own charms as long as she possibly could.
+
+She walked slowly so as not to arrive too early and because she was
+enjoying the country more than she usually did. The quietness of the
+English landscape, its look of a carefully kept garden, appealed to
+Frieda more than the vastness of her own windswept western prairies. It
+was one of the many odd ironies of fate that Jack, who loved the
+prairies must live in England, while until lately Frieda's life had been
+cast at least on the edge of the western country.
+
+The old English laborers passing back and forth from their ploughing of
+the spring fields were almost the only persons she met.
+
+When Frieda reached the little house at the edge of the village, of
+which Mrs. Huggins had once told her some story, she stopped for a
+moment without any particular motive.
+
+She did not remember exactly what the story was, if she had ever known.
+But the little house rather interested her. For one thing she had
+noticed every time she passed, at no matter what hour, the blinds were
+always drawn halfway down.
+
+The house was set in the middle of a small yard and had a little, low
+ivy covered stone fence surrounding it and a wooden gate. However, the
+front of the house was only a few yards from the street so that one
+could see it distinctly.
+
+Frieda was not standing still, but was loitering a few feet from the
+gate, gazing absently toward the lower windows.
+
+Then suddenly and certainly unexpectedly she heard a strange noise, a
+kind of muffled roar. Then an explosion burst forth so that several
+panes of window glass broke and puffs of smoke blew out.
+
+For an instant there appeared back of the window, and surrounded by the
+smoke like a cherubim among clouds, a face which Frieda did not really
+believe she saw. Yet of course she knew she did see it, or else was
+suddenly mad or dreaming.
+
+As a matter of fact she had the sensation that she was taking part in a
+ridiculous and improbable detective story, of the kind one reads in the
+weekly magazines.
+
+Yet without hesitating, or feeling the proper amount of uncertainty, or
+fear, Frieda jerked open the little wooden gate and rushed up the path
+to the front door of the house.
+
+There at least she did stop to give the bell a fierce pull, but she
+might have rushed in had she supposed the door unlocked.
+
+However, the next second a little white faced maid appeared at the door,
+and Frieda simply swept by her. The door of the room, where she had seen
+the apparition, was on the left side of the hall and without knocking
+she opened this. Just how Frieda would have explained her own behavior
+had she made a mistake did not trouble her.
+
+But she had not made a mistake. There standing in the centre of the room
+and still somewhat surrounded by smoke and with the blood coming from an
+injury to his hand, stood the person whose face Frieda believed she had
+seen through the broken window. No, she did not really believe she had
+seen it, though of course she knew she had.
+
+[Illustration: I ASSURE YOU I HAVE OFFICIAL PERMISSION]
+
+"Are you a deserter, Henry, hiding from justice?" Frieda demanded
+scathingly, and still following the example of the method employed in
+detective stories, since her experience was so exactly of the same kind.
+
+"I most certainly am not, my dear," Professor Russell answered firmly,
+but still somewhat apologetically.
+
+"I was slightly wounded soon after my arrival at the front. But I also
+found that my scientific knowledge could be of more service than my
+abilities as a soldier. So I came back to England and have been
+experimenting with gas bombs with that in mind. I assure you I have
+official permission."
+
+"Then why have you been hiding and why did you come down here?"
+
+Professor Russell looked at Frieda and smiled slowly.
+
+"You are the answer to both those questions, Frieda."
+
+Unexpectedly Frieda's blue eyes filled with tears.
+
+"I don't see how you can say that, Henry, when you have never even tried
+to see me, or to let me know what had become of you. You knew I was
+suffering horribly for fear you might be hurt or dead or something and
+you wouldn't write me."
+
+Professor Russell's lips twitched at the thought of his being blamed for
+not writing after the worst had happened to him. But he made no other
+sign.
+
+"You are mistaken, I have seen you, my dear, many a time when you have
+passed this window and at least I have had the satisfaction of realizing
+you were well and happy."
+
+"But I am neither," Frieda protested. "Besides I don't understand how
+you knew, unless, unless--do you mean Frank and Jack were both aware
+that you were here and never told me? They preferred I should suffer. I
+shall never forgive either of them, never." And Frieda drew herself up,
+very stately and very injured. But in truth her lips were trembling.
+
+"You are not to blame your sister or brother, Frieda," Professor Russell
+interrupted. "They have simply done what I asked, what I required of
+them. You came over to England to be rid of my presence. I had neither
+the desire nor the right to thrust myself upon you."
+
+"Then I don't see why you didn't go and live somewhere else," Frieda
+remarked petulantly. But at the same instant she sank down into a chair.
+
+"I do wish, Henry, you would give me some tea. You seem to have an
+extraordinary looking little girl to look after you. And I feel very
+much overcome from the shock of hearing an explosion outside a strange
+house and then seeing your face floating in space on the inside.
+Moreover, if you are so extraordinarily scientific I should think you
+would know enough to go and wash that gas bomb out of your hand."
+
+This time Professor Russell openly laughed.
+
+"It is scarcely a gas bomb inside my hand, Frieda. One of the chemicals
+simply went slightly wrong."
+
+But Frieda had closed her eyes and dropped her head back and really
+looked so pale that her husband hurried out after his small maid and the
+tea things.
+
+The moment he had disappeared however she opened her eyes again.
+
+"I am going to take Henry Russell back to the United States with me in
+ten days," she remarked aloud, but in a very small whisper. "I don't
+know how I am going to manage him or the British Government, but I am
+going to, somehow. I thought I was bored with Henry and I was and I'll
+probably be again. But I suppose all women are bored with the men they
+live with sometimes. Anyhow, I had to think I had lost Henry to know I
+wanted to keep him. He does get a little upset now and then when I want
+my own way all the time, but really under the same circumstances I don't
+suppose any other man would be half so nice to me as Henry is. Besides,
+oh well, I believe I'm pretty fond of him."
+
+When Professor Russell returned, Frieda again managed to have her eyes
+closed and she really was upset by the events of the past few moments,
+as was to be expected.
+
+Therefore she seemed very languid while Professor Russell and his little
+maid set out the tea things. She did offer faintly to help, observing
+that her husband had full use of only one hand. But as it was his left
+hand and he insisted on getting along alone, she permitted it, even to
+the actually pouring and handing her of the first cup of tea.
+
+Later he took a seat in a chair opposite her.
+
+The unfortunate thing with Frieda was that she seldom could control her
+appetite, had never been able to since her chocolate drop days. So she
+concluded she had best begin her plan of procedure early.
+
+"I don't see how Jack and Frank could have told you I was well, Henry,"
+she said plaintively. "I don't suppose you have noticed but I have lost
+a good many pounds."
+
+As a matter of fact Frieda had lost several pounds, although she was
+still reasonably rounded.
+
+"No, I had not noticed before, but I observe you have," the Professor
+returned. "I trust there is nothing serious the matter. What is the
+doctor's opinion?"
+
+Frieda shook her head. "I have not seen a doctor. Really, I have not
+spoken of this to any one before, Henry. But do you know I think,
+perhaps, I have not been well for a good many months, even before I left
+Chicago. Maybe that is what made me cross sometimes, Henry. Maybe that's
+why I ran away without telling you I was going. I really think I ought
+to have talked the matter over with you, Henry. You would have been
+quite willing for me to make Jack a visit wouldn't you, Henry, just as
+Frank is allowing Jack to go home to the ranch?"
+
+Frieda's hand holding the tea cup shook a little.
+
+"But I didn't know this was a visit, Frieda. I thought you had gone away
+for good. Indeed, I am under the impression that you said you never
+wished to see me again."
+
+Frieda shook her head.
+
+"I never could have really said that, Henry, or if I did, you were
+silly to think I meant it. I often say lots of things I don't mean. And
+I have wanted to see you lots lately."
+
+Professor Russell took Frieda's cup away and laid firm hold on both her
+hands.
+
+"Look at me, Frieda," he ordered quietly, "and don't answer me until you
+have thought carefully about what you wish to reply. You have been a
+child a long time, Frieda, but my dear, you have to grow up. All of us
+must sooner or later. I am a good deal older than you and not only that
+but I care for a lot of things which seem dull and uninteresting to you.
+So do you care for things which do not seem vital to me. But I'm willing
+to confess I'm an old fogy and sometimes I believe, Frieda dear, I did
+you a great wrong when I married you at such a youthful age. I want you
+to know, my dear, that I want to do whatever is best for your happiness.
+I am willing to go out of your life, to relieve you of me altogether if
+in any way it can be managed without reflection upon you."
+
+"Then you mean you don't love me any more, Henry, you can't forgive me
+for what I did," Frieda gasped, turning really honestly pale this time.
+Professor Russell shook his head.
+
+"I don't mean any such thing, Frieda child. Moreover, you know perfectly
+well that I don't and that it is exceedingly reprehensible for you to go
+on flirting in this way with your own husband unless you also care for
+him."
+
+Frieda sighed with satisfaction and lifted up her face to her husband,
+plainly suggesting by her expression what she expected him to do.
+
+The moment after, she said, with that funny look of gravity which no one
+ever paid any special attention to from her.
+
+"Do you know, Henry, if you say things like that to me oftener, I feel
+sure I will care for you more. But please get your hat and come with me
+now, I want to introduce you to a very dear, old friend of mine in
+Granchester. Afterwards, if your hand does not hurt, you must go up to
+Kent House with me to dinner. I intend to let Jack and Frank know that I
+can manage my own affairs and do not in the future intend to be kept in
+the dark as if I were a silly child."
+
+The Professor obeyed orders.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE OLD RANCH
+
+
+IT was a wonderful May day when Frieda and her Professor, Jack and her
+two babies and nurse, and Olive arrived at the Rainbow Ranch.
+
+Jim and Ruth Colter and Jean Merritt, who was their own Jean Bruce, of
+the old Ranch Girl days, drove down to the same funny little frame
+station to meet them. But beside the automobile they brought a great
+wagon, which Jim drove himself, in order that they might take up to the
+house as many trunks and as many people as could not be stored away in
+the car.
+
+Jack insisted on returning home alongside Jim, seated on the driver's
+seat, her feet still not quite touching the floor.
+
+She had put her babies in the automobile, with Ruth and Jean, so that
+they might make each others' acquaintance. Moreover, she had a sentiment
+in wishing to reach the old ranch with Jim as her companion. No matter
+what had happened to her, no matter what should happen in the future,
+Jim, who was her first friend, the manager of the old ranch, and her own
+and Frieda's guardian, would remain her best friend to the end of the
+chapter.
+
+She knew, too, that Olive cherished many happy memories, while Frieda
+was beatific these days in the company of her Professor.
+
+Jack felt a singing in her heart and in her ears as she saw the wide
+meadows now blossoming with purple clover and heard the western larks
+rising high over the land, dipping toward it again, then soaring higher
+up, as if they threw aside the call of the earth for the loftier one of
+the air.
+
+Jim and Ruth with their children, and Jean and Ralph Merritt and their
+little girl, when they were at the ranch, lived in the great house which
+the Ranch girls had built after coming into their fortune through the
+discovery of the mine on their place. But the old Rainbow Lodge, where
+they had all lived as little girls when it was rather hard to make
+expenses in the dry seasons in Wyoming, had never been torn down.
+Indeed, as a special request from Jack it had been kept in perfect
+repair and still remained simply and comfortably furnished.
+
+Whenever there were too many guests at the big house, some of them were
+sent down here, and more often, when he could bear the ways of high
+society no longer, Jim escaped to the old lodge for a quiet smoke and
+perhaps an hour to himself. Now and then Ruth, his wife, would come to
+join him, and they would talk of the early days at the ranch and their
+first meeting, when Ruth was a prim New England schoolmarm.
+
+So, as a favor, Jack had asked that the old Lodge be given over to her
+use while she was at home. She and the babies would come up to the big
+house for their meals, except at night when the babies could be better
+taken care of at the Lodge. This would give all the more room for the
+others.
+
+So, as Ruth, Jim and Jean, realized that Jack sincerely wished this
+arrangement, they had agreed with her desire. Jack had married so soon
+after the building of the house, which Frieda had named "The Rainbow
+Castle," that she had never learned to feel any particular affection for
+it. So in coming home she wished to return to the house she had loved
+and remembered.
+
+On either side of the old Lodge, Frieda's violet beds were still
+carefully tended and today were a mass of bloom.
+
+Olive and Frieda and the Professor insisted on getting out first at the
+Lodge with Jack and Jim. When they entered the old living room it was so
+like the one they recalled that the three women, who were girls no
+longer, felt a sudden catching of their breath.
+
+But of course Jim and Jean had arranged the old room to look as much
+like it formerly did as possible. They had the Indian rugs on the floor,
+the old shelves of books, with just the books the Ranch girls had owned
+long before, the great open fireplace and the tall brass candlesticks on
+the mantel.
+
+Then before leaving for the station Jean had filled the room with
+bunches of violets, as Frieda had once been accustomed to do.
+
+"It is still just the loveliest, homiest place in the world!" Frieda
+exclaimed.
+
+Jack did not feel that she could speak for the first minute, and the
+next Jean had come running in carrying Vive in her arms and with Jimmie
+beside her. They were followed by Jean's own little daughter,
+Jacqueline, and by two other little girls, who belonged to Jim and Ruth
+and another Jimmie, who was somewhere between the biggest and the
+littlest Jim.
+
+Then there was, of course, the immense confusion of the arrival and the
+settling of so large a number of guests. Besides there were so many
+children to be looked after who always must be considered first.
+
+That evening there was a dinner at the big house, at which everybody
+talked a great deal, asked a great many questions and answered them. But
+in reality they were all too tired and excited to get much satisfaction
+from one another.
+
+Afterwards, although Jim and Jack walked home alone to the Lodge, they
+did not try to say a great deal to each other. Only at parting Jim said,
+"Have a cup of coffee in the morning early, Jack. I have promised Ruth
+not to take you too far, but I've a new horse for you to try and I want
+you to have the first ride over the ranch with me, while the others are
+still asleep. You and I are the only ones who have ever really loved the
+dawn out here in God's country. Ruth has left some riding togs for you
+somewhere in your room."
+
+Waking before six o'clock next morning, Jack was lying in bed breathing
+deeply of the sweet clover-scented air, when she heard a never to be
+forgotten whistle outside her window.
+
+She stuck her head out.
+
+"I'll be down in ten minutes, Jim. Is that the horse for me? Isn't he a
+beauty? But hitch yours and mine somewhere outside and open the Lodge
+door, I didn't lock it last night, and come in and start my coffee. I
+just opened my eyes this minute."
+
+Ten minutes later, as she had said, Jack slid quietly downstairs so as
+not to arouse her children. She smelt the delicious aroma of the coffee
+in the old Lodge kitchen, once presided over by old Aunt Ellen, who had
+died a few years before. She also discovered Jim helping himself to the
+first cup when she appeared. But instead he gave it to her, got another
+for himself and handed her a napkin filled with sandwiches which Ruth
+had provided. Then they drank and munched as silently and contentedly as
+they always had in each other's company during many years and various
+experiences.
+
+But they had both stepped out on the big front porch of the Lodge, when
+Jim suddenly swung round and put his hands on Jack's slender shoulders.
+
+He had seen something in her face which the others had not, perhaps
+because he had always cared for her most.
+
+"Ain't anybody been doin' anything to you, you don't like, Boss?" Jim
+demanded, purposely breaking into the old careless speech he had used
+before Ruth's coming to Rainbow Ranch to educate them all, and Jim more
+than any one. "Because if anyone has, you know you can always count on
+your old pardner."
+
+But Jack only laughed and shook her head rubbing it against his sleeve,
+as a young colt does. This had been one of the things she used to do as
+a girl, half as an expression of affection and half to conceal her
+embarrassment.
+
+Then Jack ran out to where her horse was waiting. She had on a khaki
+riding costume, a new one, but except for that, pretty much of the same
+kind that she had been accustomed to wearing as Jacqueline Ralston.
+
+She was now looking over the horse critically.
+
+"He is one of the most perfect creatures I ever saw, Jim. I don't care
+what other people say, I like our fine western horses better than any
+others in the world."
+
+"Try him, Jack," and Jim lifted her lightly up.
+
+The next instant she had gone down the avenue like a streak of light,
+whirled and come back again.
+
+"His movement seems perfect, too, but I'll have to give him more of a
+test before I can decide."
+
+She then started off again with Jim Colter beside her.
+
+"If you like him, Jack, the horse is a present from me. I got him and
+had him broken for you. I don't ever want anyone else to use him."
+
+Jack's face flushed. "Jim, there never was anybody so good to me as you
+have always been, and no one who has ever understood me so well. I don't
+mean that there is much to understand, but what there is I know you
+believe the best of."
+
+"Well, I don't expect there is anybody who began to know you as soon as
+I did, Jack," Jim Colter answered, realizing again that there was
+something behind Jack's words which she did not exactly wish to confide
+in him.
+
+It was all very well for the rest of the family to say Jack didn't look
+a day older. She was better looking than she used to be, if that was
+what they were talking about, and her figure looked very slim and sweet
+and girlish, as she rode there beside him, as gracefully and as much at
+ease as ever. But Jack's expression was different, there were shadows
+under her eyes, no matter how her lips were smiling. Jim remembered
+that even if he had liked Frank Kent, he never had thought much of
+Englishmen as husbands for American girls.
+
+But he said nothing more on the subject to Jack, only pointing out
+objects in the familiar, old landscape which they both loved, and
+realizing that if Jack had anything to tell him she would do so of her
+own accord later on.
+
+They were late to breakfast, of course, so they found that all the
+others, having finished, were out on the lawn waiting.
+
+"I suppose Jim tried to show you every horse and every cow on the ranch,
+Jack," Ruth began. "I hope you are not worn out, child. I told him to
+allow you one night's rest."
+
+Ruth Colter was growing very matronly these days with her husband and
+son and two daughters to look after. She and Jim were to have two other
+daughters, to repeat as they always said, another group of four new
+Ranch Girls. But as yet only two had put in their appearance.
+
+"Yes, and after she has had breakfast I want to take Jack and everybody
+down to the Rainbow Mine. I always feel it belongs more to Ralph, and
+to me than to the others. Oh, simply because my husband was its first
+engineer."
+
+Jean's eyes were as brown and velvety as ever and she wore that little
+expression of pride and self satisfaction that comes into the faces of
+so many women who are married to successful men. It is as if they shared
+the pride and glory of the success, without any of the effort or
+necessary disappointment.
+
+"Remember, Henry, when you and Ralph were more or less blown up going
+down the shaft of the old mine. It was after that, Frieda adopted you."
+
+The Professor nodded. "I had my legs broken didn't I, so I couldn't get
+away? Well, Frieda always prefers her victims helpless."
+
+Frieda tossed her head and walked away as she always had done when any
+member of her family teased her.
+
+Later in the day all the family and half a dozen visitors did go down to
+the old mine, which was still yielding a fair amount of gold, but not
+half so much as in the old days. Afterwards, lunch was served in the
+neighborhood of Rainbow creek and most of the day was spent outdoors.
+
+Toward the close of the afternoon, however, everybody else wandered away
+leaving the four one time Ranch Girls together.
+
+They were sitting in the afternoon sunshine on a patch of grass not far
+from the neighborhood of the creek.
+
+Jack was lying down with her head resting in Olive's lap, Frieda was
+close to Jean and now and then putting her hand inside her cousin's for
+a moment. She and Jean had always been cronies in the old days, when the
+four of them had been divided into pairs over some small issue.
+
+"I don't believe this is far from the place where Frank and I discovered
+the first gold in Rainbow creek," Jack remarked drowsily, a little worn
+out from the excitement of the day. "How filled the old ranch was with
+memories and thoughts of her husband!" Jack smiled to herself. Certainly
+she had been the impatient one and Frank the patient in those many
+months of her long illness.
+
+Whatever anger Jack had felt in regard to her husband's autocratic
+attitude toward her, had entirely disappeared soon after saying farewell
+to him. But the puzzle was still present. Frank had been kind and sweet
+to her for the time before she left home. But never once had he frankly
+declared that in future he would be willing for Jack to decide important
+questions according to her own judgment, even as he must act by his own.
+And this was what Jack wanted, the sense of spiritual freedom.
+
+"When is Frank coming over to join you, Jack?" Jean Merritt asked
+unexpectedly. "Ralph hopes to get home from his work at the canal in a
+few weeks and it would be a great pleasure if he and Frank could be here
+at the same time."
+
+"Frank, oh, Frank isn't coming at all, Jean. He couldn't possibly leave
+his own country now, while they are at war. There is so much he feels he
+ought to do."
+
+Jack hoped she was not blushing, but was painfully aware that Frieda's
+eyes were fixed somewhat critically upon her. Frieda was giving herself
+more airs than ever, now that she and her Professor were reconciled, and
+she had been able to persuade the British Government to allow her to
+bring him to the United States. The truth was the Professor had finished
+the scientific work he had undertaken, and in coming to his own country
+at the present time would be enabled to get hold of materials much
+needed in England.
+
+Not actually realizing, but guessing at Jack's embarrassment, Olive
+remarked hastily.
+
+"After all there is some advantage in being an old maid, one does not
+have to worry continually over being in the same place with one's
+husband. You will all have to come over to see my Indian School some day
+soon. Perhaps I am wedded to that."
+
+"Nonsense, Olive," Frieda murmured, "but really I don't see why you have
+never married. You were obstinate enough about not accepting poor Don
+Harmon, but then you got most of your grandmother's money after all.
+Still you must have had other chances. You are as good looking as the
+rest of us and some people like brunettes best."
+
+As Frieda's own yellow hair was at this moment unbound, so that it might
+get the air and sunshine, and as she looked at it with utter
+satisfaction as she spoke, her three companions laughed unrestrainedly.
+
+"Oh, come now Frieda, you don't really believe anyone has such poor
+taste as that," Olive teased.
+
+But at this instant seeing that Jack's nurse was coming toward them
+carrying Vive in her arms, Frieda got the best of the situation as she
+often did.
+
+"Oh, well, perhaps the combination is prettiest after all. Vive is the
+only real beauty with her dark eyes and yellow hair."
+
+Frieda held out her arms for the baby, who came to her with little
+ripples of happy laughter, and the two blonde heads, which were so
+nearly the same color, were held close together.
+
+"I believe Vive really is the prettiest of all the children," Jean
+remarked critically, which was good of her, since she had a little girl
+of her own.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+VIVE
+
+
+SO the days and weeks passed on at the Rainbow Ranch, seeming to be
+uneventful and yet filled with quantities of pleasures and interests.
+
+June came and the prairies were covered with wild flowers.
+
+No one stayed indoors, except to sleep and eat, and oftentimes not for
+either of these things. Many nights Jack slept out on the Lodge
+verandah, sometimes with Olive or Jean, more often alone.
+
+There were wonderful white nights such as only the west knows.
+
+Jack used to love to lie and listen to the sounds she had long known and
+loved. A pair of owls in one of the old cottonwood trees held nightly
+conversations with each other, now and then screeching in such an
+irritated fashion that Jack laughed over their apparently human
+qualities.
+
+Then far away from the house on the neighboring prairies she could hear
+the coyotes call to one another with warnings of danger.
+
+These were excellent nights in which to think, for sometimes the moon
+made it almost too light for sleep. And Jack had a great deal to occupy
+her mind. Twice a week she wrote Frank and he wrote her with the same
+frequency, since at this time there were still two mail boats a week.
+But neither made any reference to their conversation on the evening when
+Jack had made her request to come home and given her reason.
+
+Things in England were not going so well at this period as Frank had
+hoped, and he wrote chiefly of this. But he also said that he now
+received frequent news from Captain MacDonnell, who was growing better
+and now knew what fate had in store for him. He might be able to walk in
+the future, but only with crutches.
+
+On several occasions Jack thought of deliberately asking her husband to
+come to some kind of an agreement with her for the future. Yet she
+hardly dared open a subject that might lead to differences between them,
+when they were so far apart, but she was very often lonely for him and
+sometimes repented having left England at all.
+
+Jack, of course, was not always in this frame of mind. During the
+greater part of the time she was very happy.
+
+A number of hours each day she spent on the horse Jim had given her,
+which she had named "Britain" in honor of her adopted country.
+
+Now and then Jean and Olive and Frieda would refuse to ride, preferring
+some other amusement, but there was always Jim as a companion.
+
+Jim Colter was now a successful and fairly wealthy ranchman owning a
+half interest in the Rainbow Ranch and having the entire ownership of
+the one adjoining it. But he continued to follow much the same routine
+as when he was only the manager for the Ranch girls.
+
+That is, whenever it was possible, he rode over miles of the ranch land,
+watching the crops and his water supply, and carefully examining all his
+horses and cattle, when they seemed to need his attention.
+
+Accompanying Jim on these excursions had been, not only one of Jack's
+chief amusements, but one of her serious occupations as a girl and it
+still greatly interested her. Besides, she and Jim saw each other under
+more favorable circumstances in this way than in any other, and had
+more real opportunities for conversation.
+
+But always Jack arranged to get back to the Lodge in time to see her
+children before they went to bed. They had an excellent nurse and of
+course there was all the rest of the family to look after them, but Jack
+had followed this custom at home, except under unusual circumstances and
+would not have given it up for a great deal.
+
+Therefore she was worried one afternoon when Jim insisted upon staying
+out later than usual. She would have returned alone, except that Jim had
+found a young colt which had injured itself and wished Jack's help and
+advice in the care of it.
+
+Finally, when they did get started for home, Jack rode ahead like the
+wind, calling back to her companion not to try to follow her unless he
+liked, as she knew he had some other matters on the place to look after.
+
+By making unusual speed she hoped to reach home a few minutes before
+six, when Vive was put into bed and Jimmie ate his supper before
+following her.
+
+Olive was waiting on the porch when Jack came into sight and went out to
+meet her before she had dismounted.
+
+"What is it, Olive?" Jack asked sharply, as soon as she saw her. "Which
+one of the children is it? What has happened?" For it is a curious fact
+that a mother often feels this premonition of danger.
+
+"There is nothing to be seriously frightened about, Jack," Olive replied
+quietly, "only little Vive isn't very well. Frieda and I had her with us
+for a little while this afternoon and she seemed somewhat languid.
+Frieda thought she had a little fever, so Ruth saw her and we have sent
+for the doctor. He will be here in another few moments."
+
+Jack made no comment except to go swiftly indoors, leaving Olive to find
+some one to care for her horse.
+
+She knew, of course, that Olive was telling her as little as possible.
+
+Jimmie had been taken away to the other house, so Vive now occupied
+alone the big room at the Lodge which had belonged to Jack and Frieda
+when they were little girls.
+
+It was simply furnished with a few rugs and wicker chairs and bright
+pictures and three little white iron cots.
+
+In the smallest Vive lay apparently asleep on her pillow.
+
+But Jack saw at once she was not asleep. Her exquisite little face was
+flushed a bright scarlet, her lids heavy and closed, and the strangest
+fact was that one of her little hands twitched unceasingly.
+
+Now and then she opened her golden brown eyes, but without seeing or
+knowing anyone.
+
+When the doctor arrived he made no effort to disguise the seriousness of
+Vive's condition. If she were to live it would be a fight and one of the
+hardest of all kinds, since they must simply wait and watch, with very
+little possible to do.
+
+For some unknown reason, perhaps because there had been too much
+excitement from the trip, too much notice taken of her by too many
+people, Vive had meningitis.
+
+But Jack was never a coward and it is scarcely worth saying that a
+mother's courage, so long as she thinks it can help her child, is the
+purest courage of all.
+
+As soon as she heard the verdict, Jack went quickly to her own room and
+put on a white cotton dress. Afterwards, until Vive was better or worse,
+she would never leave her side for a moment.
+
+But it is one thing to be brave when a shock comes and one has health
+and strength to meet it. It is another to keep up that courage hour
+after hour, day after day, when the strength is gone and the body and
+mind unconsciously sick with weariness.
+
+There was a trained nurse, of course, and any member of her family would
+have done anything that was humanly possible to relieve Jack's vigil.
+But she would not be persuaded or argued into going out of her baby's
+room, and slept there in the hours when she did sleep, half awake and
+half dreaming, on a small cot by Vive's.
+
+And most of the time Frieda stayed with her.
+
+In a way it seems strange that it should have been Frieda. Olive, one
+would have supposed to be more sympathetic, Jean and Ruth had children
+of their own.
+
+But some change had been taking place in Frieda for a good many months
+and she adored little Vive. Whenever any of the others disputed Frieda's
+right, she always said quietly that after all, she was Jack's only
+sister, and that if anything happened she must be the one to be by her.
+
+If Jack's husband had been with her, why then it would have been
+different. So Frieda even waved away her devoted Professor, who feared
+she might be ill, by telling him there would be time enough to think of
+her later on.
+
+Although she and Jack sat side by side for many hours with their eyes on
+the baby, they but rarely spoke to each other.
+
+Yet it was too pitiful to continue always to watch the movement of
+Vive's baby hands and her heavy breathing.
+
+"If Vive dies do you think Frank will ever forgive me," Jack asked one
+night.
+
+And true to herself Frieda tossed her yellow head.
+
+"I don't see what Frank has to forgive? The point is will he ever
+forgive himself for having you go through all this alone?"
+
+"But I ought not to have brought Vive away. Still I wouldn't mind
+anything if only Frank were with me."
+
+A little later when the doctor arrived he said that the crisis would
+come within the hour and he would remain.
+
+Olive and Jean waited in the Lodge living room, Jim had disappeared
+somewhere an hour before. Ruth Colter came into the nursery and stayed
+by Jack.
+
+Half an hour passed. Then suddenly there was a strange, almost an
+unearthly silence in the room, and it was as if one could see the
+little white soul rise and float softly away like a bird.
+
+The little figure in the cradle was still.
+
+The doctor rose up.
+
+"It is over," he said pitifully.
+
+Frieda covered up her face, but Jack went over and looked down at Vive
+for a moment and then turned to the others.
+
+"Please do not let anyone come with me," she asked. "I must go outdoors
+alone."
+
+Then Jack went out past the living room, through the long avenue of tall
+trees, on farther and farther, not knowing where she was going.
+
+The Rainbow Ranch, which she had loved better than any place in the
+world, had taken from her the human being, whom at this moment she
+believed she loved most.
+
+Over Rainbow creek there hung a tiny yellow, crescent moon. It seemed to
+Jack that this, too, made her think of her baby, it was just as cold,
+just as perfect and as far away.
+
+She stayed there a long time, then getting up she wandered on. She did
+not think whether her family would be uneasy, she did not care.
+
+It seemed to her she never wished to go back again to the Lodge.
+
+But finally a little clearer judgment came to her and she turned back.
+
+It was almost dawn.
+
+There, standing on the porch of the Rainbow Lodge, was a man's figure.
+Jack supposed it was Jim.
+
+He started toward her and the next moment Jack was in his arms.
+
+"Do you know, Frank?" Jack queried.
+
+Frank drew her closer to him.
+
+A little later she allowed Frank to lead her into the house, where she
+undressed and went to bed, with him sitting beside her.
+
+She had made no inquiry about how he had arrived at such a moment. Jack
+had but one thought at this time, no others could enter her mind.
+
+The facts were that Frank had left England ten days before bringing
+Captain MacDonnell with him. He had a mission from his Government so as
+to make the trip possible. But more than anything else he felt he must
+see his wife.
+
+He had tried to write Jack, to tell her that he believed he had been
+unfair, that his obstinacy should never make an issue between them
+again. But it had all been so difficult to write and it must be so long
+before he could receive Jack's answer.
+
+Moreover, Frank wanted to bring Captain MacDonnell to the ranch to stay
+during his convalescence. Soon after Jack's departure he had gone over
+to France, as an act of expiation both to his wife and friend. There he
+had found Captain MacDonnell recovering, but infinitely depressed with
+the thought that he could no longer serve his country, but must be only
+a burden.
+
+On the arrival of his steamer in New York Lord Kent had wired Jim
+Colter, but Jim had thought it best not to speak to Jack until Frank was
+able to reach her.
+
+He had therefore sent him a wire telling of Vive's illness, and Frank
+had hurried west, leaving Captain MacDonnell with friends in New York
+city.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+FAREWELL
+
+
+ABOUT a week later Captain MacDonnell arrived at the Rainbow Ranch
+accompanied by a man servant who waited upon him. He looked better than
+any of his friends had anticipated.
+
+Since there was so much sorrow in the world at the present time, Jack
+and Frank had made up their minds that they would not let their own
+influence other people more than they could avoid. Moreover, they had
+found each other again at just the right moment and were more devoted,
+more united than ever before. Frank explained his own change of attitude
+to his wife, but all the events of the past seemed small in comparison
+with their loss.
+
+It was Frieda who for a while seemed the more outwardly inconsolable.
+
+Actually the Professor came one day in distress to Jack herself.
+
+"My dear Jack, I don't know what I shall do with my little Frieda when
+you have gone home to England!" he exclaimed. For it had been decided
+that Jack and Jimmie were to return home when Frank did.
+
+"But you will both be coming over soon," Jack answered, showing no sign
+that it might be strange under the circumstances to expect her to
+comfort Frieda.
+
+The Professor did not see this. He really saw very little else in the
+world except his wife and his work.
+
+"We may not be able to come for several months. In the meantime if she
+frets herself ill?"
+
+Jack promised to talk to her sister.
+
+One evening when Frieda complained of a headache and did not come down
+to dinner, Jack went up to her.
+
+She found her sister lying on a couch and looking very young and sweet.
+
+"You are not to worry too much on my account, Frieda dear," Jack began.
+
+"I am not supposed to be unselfish," Frieda murmured.
+
+But Jack paid no attention to her speech. "Perhaps you'll have a baby
+some day yourself, dear."
+
+At this Frieda pulled her sister down and whispered something in her
+ear. Jack's face flushed.
+
+"I should be happier than anything! Remember you and Henry are to come
+to us as soon as it can be arranged."
+
+A few days later Lord and Lady Kent with their little boy left for the
+East. They were to stop a few days in Washington and then sail.
+
+Not long afterwards Frieda and the Professor also went away from the
+ranch, as Professor Russell had a good many things to look after and
+Frieda would not be separated from him.
+
+As Ralph Merritt had arrived for a visit, Jean's attention was occupied
+with him. So as a matter of fact Captain MacDonnell was rather left to
+Olive's care.
+
+At first it did not seem a large duty simply to try and keep Captain
+MacDonnell amused and she had wanted to do something. But Olive had not
+reckoned with her task.
+
+Captain MacDonnell was an Irishman and a Scotchman, which means he was
+able to be very gay and also very melancholy. And always in times past,
+when his melancholy mood had taken hold on him, he could mount his horse
+and ride the spectre away, or else engage in some other active outdoor
+occupation.
+
+But here he was still so young a man, with all his future before him,
+and compelled to sit all day in a wheeled chair, or else hobble about on
+crutches.
+
+It has not been the illness that has been hardest for the soldiers to
+bear, but oftentimes this coming back to accept with resignation a new
+kind of life.
+
+Yet Captain MacDonnell tried to be patient, tried to let no one guess
+what he was suffering at thus having his career ended so soon, and being
+also unable to go on with the service to his country which he so longed
+to give.
+
+But Olive, who had always more of a gift for sympathy than any one of
+the Ranch girls, appreciated what he was enduring more than she even
+revealed to him.
+
+She had been reading him a volume of Kipling one day, and happening to
+raise her eyes, saw that he was not listening. She even stopped a few
+moments and found that he was unaware of it.
+
+When Captain MacDonnell did discover his own absorption, he turned to
+Olive with a charming smile.
+
+"Forgive me," he explained. "I do not intend to be ungrateful, indeed I
+am more grateful than I know how to express. But those stories of India
+started me to thinking of the first years I was out there. It is a
+strange country, India. I don't think we western people understand it."
+
+He and Olive were sitting on the Lodge verandah.
+
+Olive nodded, "I do understand what you must feel and I do wish there
+was something else to interest you."
+
+Then she remained silent. After all Captain MacDonnell could not go on
+in idleness like this. There must be something he could find to do, some
+real thing. Poorer men were learning trades. It would be better for him
+to do this if only he could be persuaded to feel enough interest.
+
+Olive did not realize she was frowning.
+
+Suddenly she exclaimed.
+
+"Look here, Captain MacDonnell, didn't I hear Frank say once that you
+used to be fond of drawing when you were a small boy, that you were once
+undecided whether to be an artist or a soldier?"
+
+Captain MacDonnell smiled. "I believe so, I've an idea I was a pretty
+conceited youngster and would have made as much of a failure at one as
+I have of the other."
+
+But Olive refused to pay any attention to this speech.
+
+For a moment Captain MacDonnell forgot himself thinking of how
+attractive Olive looked.
+
+He had not remembered thinking of this especially when they had met in
+England, only that she was unusual looking and not in the least like an
+American or English woman. It was almost as if she might be Spanish.
+Captain MacDonnell also had some Spanish blood farther back in his own
+family, when the Spanish were the great voyagers and visited and settled
+on the coasts of Ireland.
+
+But Olive went on talking.
+
+"I do wish you would undertake the drawing again, it might at least
+amuse you, and there are so many interesting people and scenes you could
+attempt out here."
+
+Captain MacDonnell shook his head.
+
+"I'm afraid the time has gone by for that," he returned.
+
+But Olive had a kind of gentle, sensible persistency that nearly always
+wins its way.
+
+"Still, there wouldn't be any harm in just seeing if it might amuse
+you," she went on. "I am sure it would be a kind of relief."
+
+Captain MacDonnell again looked at Olive. Her deep toned skin was softly
+flushed and her dark eyes brilliant with earnestness.
+
+He laughed a little. "Of course it will, a relief to you, so for that
+reason I'll attempt it. But on one condition?"
+
+Olive flushed a little with embarrassment, since she had never wholly
+gotten over her shyness. However, she realized that Captain MacDonnell
+was teasing her. He did very often when he was in a gay humor and Olive
+felt it was good for her, as she was too inclined to be grave.
+
+"What is the condition?" she inquired. "Of course it will be relief to
+me to know you are happier," at which Captain MacDonnell felt that Olive
+had scored.
+
+"Why, that I won't have to keep on calling you Miss Van Mater. It is too
+much of a name, just as mine is."
+
+Captain MacDonnell was doubtful as to how Olive would receive this
+suggestion. She seemed more formal than the rest of the family and he
+had thought her colder until her great kindness to him. Now he at least
+knew better than to misunderstand her shyness for coldness, as a good
+many people did.
+
+Olive replied perfectly naturally.
+
+"Of course I will. The truth is I have always thought of you as Bryan,
+as Jack and Frank always talked of you by this name."
+
+His promise would have really passed out of Captain MacDonnell's mind if
+Olive had not supplied him with a great variety of drawing materials
+within a few days, which she had taken a good deal of trouble to secure
+for him.
+
+But as a matter of fact she was really surprised to discover how much
+talent he had. But then Captain MacDonnell used to work for many hours
+each day, so that it was not long before his former facility came back
+to him. More than this, he discovered to his own surprise as well, that
+he could do a great deal better work than he had as a boy. Somehow the
+skill must have developed in him unheeded as he was growing older.
+
+She came out on the lawn one afternoon and discovered Captain MacDonnell
+at work a little distance off.
+
+He had evidently persuaded one of the cowboys to pose for him, as the
+man and his horse were standing in a picturesque attitude only a few
+feet away.
+
+Olive walked over to them and stood studying the drawing until Captain
+MacDonnell turned round to speak to her.
+
+"Why don't you say it is good?" he demanded boyishly. "You know I've
+half an idea it is."
+
+Olive nodded enthusiastically.
+
+"It's like Remington."
+
+Captain MacDonnell laughed. "Not quite. Still I am getting on. But it
+seems to me you are neglecting me lately. I say, suppose you pose for
+me. That would be ripping. You won't be sensitive if I don't make much
+of a go just at first."
+
+For a moment Olive hesitated. Then it struck her that she would enjoy
+sitting outdoors in the early autumn sunshine for a few hours each day
+with her friend. For Captain MacDonnell had become her friend by this
+time, she had no doubts on this point. Moreover, she had made up her
+mind she must soon go away. She had planned to take a course in nursing
+so as to fit herself to be more useful, and there was really no reason
+for further delay.
+
+She happened to mention this fact to Captain MacDonnell one day and it
+was remarkable after that what a time he took to finish his sketch.
+
+The truth was the artist made not one sketch but half a dozen.
+
+Jim and Ruth were delighted with his success, so that Captain MacDonnell
+finally persuaded Olive to allow him to attempt a painting.
+
+The work was undertaken inside the Lodge living room. Olive was dressed
+in an old gold silk, and the artist insisted that she needed a
+background of strange oriental colors.
+
+One end of the great room was therefore changed into a studio.
+
+Fortunately Ruth and Olive had still in their possession a number of
+lovely old silks and draperies which the Ranch girls had brought back
+from their trip to Italy many years before.
+
+One day, after he had been working for about a month, Olive slipped
+quietly into the studio without the artist's hearing her. She found him
+sitting before his easel smoking, but frowning and looking less happy
+than he had in some time.
+
+But as he caught sight of Olive his expression changed.
+
+"I don't know how I'll ever be able to thank you for making me so
+lovely? I don't mind being handed down to posterity in such a
+delightfully untruthful picture," Olive remarked gayly.
+
+"Oh, it's untruthful enough," Captain MacDonnell answered. "It is well
+you came in just when you did, as I was thinking of making an end of
+it."
+
+"Then I shouldn't have forgiven you."
+
+Captain MacDonnell nodded.
+
+"That is what I was afraid of, that and that you would not be willing to
+sit for me again."
+
+Olive laughed. "Oh, you must get hold of someone more attractive than I
+am for the next portrait. After a while, as you are so much better,
+you'll be wanting to go back to London to work seriously. You know you
+have promised me that?"
+
+Captain MacDonnell shook his head.
+
+"No," he returned. "Oh, I don't mean that I did not promise, I only mean
+that I shall probably not keep my word. I think I shall give up and
+allow myself to become a kind of good for nothing, half invalid, as soon
+as I am separated from you."
+
+However, as she had by this time grown accustomed to her companion's
+swift changes of mood, so unlike her own, Olive only laughed?
+
+"Shall I pose for you again today?"
+
+Then there was silence in the room for half an hour while Bryan worked.
+Finally he put down his brushes.
+
+"I am no good for work today, Olive. The truth is I want to say
+something to you and I don't know whether I have the right.
+
+"Olive!"
+
+For an instant Olive changed color. Then she answered.
+
+"I can hardly imagine anything you haven't the right to say to me,
+Bryan. You often talk of your gratitude for what I have done for you.
+But I wonder if you know what you have done for me? I have never had so
+kind a friend except Jack. It is always difficult for me to think of her
+as Lady Kent."
+
+"But I am not your friend," Bryan returned brusquely, "and it is about
+that and about Lady Jack I want to talk to you. The truth is it's absurd
+to call a man your friend when he loves you. Of course I feel I am not
+all of a man these days and I have not much money and my art may never
+come to anything."
+
+"Any more disqualifications, Bryan?" Olive asked softly. Perhaps she was
+not altogether surprised at what she was at present hearing.
+
+"Oh yes, a great many," Captain MacDonnell returned, "only I think I
+won't tell you about them just now."
+
+"And what has Jack to do with what you wish to say to me?" Olive asked,
+and this time spoke more seriously.
+
+"Oh, she has nothing at all to do with it now," Captain MacDonnell
+returned. "Only once upon a time before I met you, I used to think Lady
+Jack was the most attractive woman I had ever known. I used also to
+believe that as long as Frank had gotten ahead of me I never wished to
+marry. But I suppose the real fact was that I wanted one of what Lady
+Jack told me you called yourselves? The Ranch Girls, wasn't it? Only I
+had not seen the real one in those days."
+
+"Look here, Bryan, you need not think I ever forget you are an
+Irishman," Olive laughed. "Yet I think I like your flattery."
+
+However, Captain MacDonnell was waiting for another kind of answer, and
+after a little Olive gave him the one he desired.
+
+So began for Olive, what still remains, in spite of all the other
+adventures in life, the great adventure of marriage.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+"UNDER TWO FLAGS"
+
+
+ON an afternoon in summer nearly a year later, two flags might be seen
+flying from the towers of Kent House.
+
+Over the English meadows the wind blew softly, but strongly enough to
+whip the flags out straight so that from some distance one could see the
+British Lion and the Stars and Stripes.
+
+Since Olive's engagement to Captain MacDonnell, the United States had
+entered the war and was now one of the great Allies.
+
+Inside Kent House there was a peculiar atmosphere of excitement and
+expectancy.
+
+The house was filled with flowers from the big garden, a profusion of
+roses and the simpler flowers for which England is famous, wall flowers,
+daisies, sweet-peas and canterbury bells, named in honor of the great
+Cathedral at Canterbury.
+
+In the dining room, which opened just back of the library, the table was
+already laid for dinner.
+
+Evidently there was to be a gala occasion, and yet this was unusual, for
+since the war began there had been few entertainments at Kent House or
+in any great English home.
+
+Nevertheless Lady Kent herself presently came into the dining room and
+looked with the deepest interest at the beautiful table, touching things
+here and there and making slight alterations in the arrangement of the
+flowers.
+
+The table was in white except for a stripe of rose-colored satin through
+the center and a bowl of pink roses.
+
+Jack had on a house dress of some soft white material, as she was not
+wearing mourning and had not worn it after Vive's death. There was too
+much black being used in the world.
+
+She was standing still for a moment, frowning slightly, but with
+interest, not dissatisfaction, when another person entered and came up
+beside her.
+
+"I have been taking a long walk, Jack, trying to get rid of my
+restlessness and to make the time pass more swiftly. I wish you had been
+with me. But how beautiful your place is! I don't see how you have
+managed to keep things in such splendid condition with so many of your
+men at the front. I have been talking to some real English dairymaids
+down in the left paddock. They made me think of the stories and nursery
+rhymes we used to read when we were children. Then England seemed as far
+away from the old Wyoming ranch as the planet Mars. However, I am the
+last one of the Ranch Girls to visit you in England. Ralph's work has
+made our coming to you impossible before and now the war has brought us
+to this side of the world, for how long none of us can say. Have you
+heard anything from Frieda?"
+
+Lady Kent shook her head slowly.
+
+She was watching Jean and at the same time thinking how pretty and
+untroubled she looked. Jean's marriage to Ralph Merritt seemed to have
+turned out an unqualified success. Ralph had come to be known as a
+leading American engineer, but now had given up all the other work he
+had been engaged in to offer his services as an engineer to France. And
+Jean had left her little girl at home with Jim and Ruth at the Rainbow
+Ranch so that she could be nearer her husband.
+
+"I wish Frieda had not gone to London today. Suppose something happens
+and she is not back in time for our dinner! Then everything will be
+disarranged. We cannot have our dinner party tomorrow, for by that time
+we will have separated again. Tomorrows are uncertain quantities these
+days, aren't they?" And Jean's expression changed for an instant.
+
+But Jack answered her quickly. This was to be Ralph Merritt's last night
+in England for an indefinite time, as he was leaving for France the next
+day, while Jean was to remain with Lord and Lady Kent.
+
+"Oh, Frieda will be here on time; I don't think we need worry. You see,
+she is to go to his office and get hold of the Professor, else, Frieda
+says, if he chances to be especially interested in his work, he will
+forget all about our plan, and of course to have one of the eight of us
+missing tonight would ruin everything." Again Jack glanced about her
+dinner table, which was laid for eight covers. "Still, I think Frieda
+does Henry an injustice, for, in spite of the absorbing scientific work
+he is doing, he is far less absent-minded than he used to be. And I
+never saw a more attentive husband. Since Frieda's baby came I believe
+he regards her as more wonderful than ever."
+
+As she finished speaking Jack laughed and Jean slipped her arm about her
+as they walked out of the dining room. Jean was thinking of another
+baby, who had gone away before the new one came and of Jack's
+inexhaustible courage. They had not realized in the old Rainbow Ranch
+days that she had so much spiritual as well as physical courage.
+
+"Well, I am glad Frieda has your old nurse for her baby, Jack, and is
+living here with you, for I cannot take her seriously as a mother, never
+having been able to realize thoroughly that she is properly and sedately
+married. However, we at least have our guests of honor safe."
+
+Lady Kent nodded in response.
+
+"Yes, I have just seen Olive. She and Bryan are both resting, so as to
+get the most out of their wedding dinner tonight. It was wise of them to
+come up so early from London this morning. I declare, Jean, it is one of
+the most beautiful things that ever happened for Olive and Bryan to have
+married.
+
+"Just from a selfish standpoint you can't imagine what it will mean to
+have Olive living so near me. I have so missed my family!"
+
+Smiling Jean shook her brown head thoughtfully.
+
+"At present there is not much danger of your missing your family for
+some time to come, dear. You and Frank will probably grow exceedingly
+tired of them. Now I must go upstairs to rest for a while myself. I
+don't wish to have Ralph decide tonight that he is the least fortunate
+of the four husbands."
+
+Jean Merritt went on ahead, Jack seeing her disappear, and then stopping
+for a moment to speak to her butler.
+
+Although it was to be only a family party tonight, she was taking far
+more interest in the arrangements for her dinner than she had ever been
+known to do before for the most formal occasions.
+
+But then this dinner was to be unusual, since it was the first time the
+four old-time Ranch Girls had ever been her own and her husband's guests
+at Kent House. Moreover, their husbands were also with them, even Olive
+and Captain MacDonnell, who had been married only a few weeks.
+
+Nearly a year had passed since Olive's and Captain MacDonnell's
+engagement, although the wedding had not taken place until the present
+summer. The scene of the marriage was the Rainbow Ranch, with only Jim
+and Ruth, their children, and a few friends present, since the rest of
+the family were in Europe. But immediately after the ceremony Olive and
+Bryan had decided to risk the dangers of sailing for home and had landed
+safely in England only the day before.
+
+Having spent the night in London, they had come directly to Kent House,
+knowing that Jack planned a family party in their honor.
+
+A good many months before, Frieda and her Professor had arrived at Kent
+House, so that Frieda's baby might be born with Frieda in her sister's
+care. Moreover, the Professor was working harder than ever, since his
+own country had entered the war, to accomplish certain scientific
+discoveries which should counteract the German terrorism.
+
+A little more than an hour later Lady Kent was slowly getting ready for
+dinner. She wished to be dressed first and downstairs ready to receive
+her family.
+
+Nevertheless she was frowning and looking slightly disturbed.
+
+She had left word that she was to be informed as soon as her sister,
+Mrs. Russell, returned from London. In the meantime she knew a train
+had arrived from town, yet no word came to her.
+
+Jack was about to ring the bell and find out if her order had been
+forgotten, when a light knock came at the door and her husband entered.
+
+"I came out early, Jack, dear, in order to do honor to your party and I
+managed to corral the two other husbands, Ralph and the Professor, so
+there need be no delay. It is good to be at home now and then."
+
+Frank had looked a little tired, but his face cleared at the sight of
+his wife. Jack was very beautiful in a white evening gown. The frock was
+not new, since she was buying nothing of the kind during the war, but it
+was the handsomest one she owned and the most becoming. She had planned
+with Jean and Frieda that they were to look as well as possible, since
+the dinner was to be one they would never forget. Moreover, Olive was a
+bride and they must also do her honor.
+
+Since the change in government Frank Kent had been made a member of the
+War Cabinet and devoted most of his time to the great intellectual
+labors it demanded of him. Frequently it was impossible for him to
+return more than two or three times a week to Kent House.
+
+As Jack kissed her husband her expression lightened.
+
+"I would like to give a dinner party every night, Frank, if I thought it
+would bring you home. Are things going well?"
+
+Then, as Frank nodded his head gravely (he and Jack did not often
+discuss details of his work, since government secrets were not to be
+mentioned even with her), she added, with a little sigh partly of relief
+and partly vexation:
+
+"Well, thank goodness you got hold of Frieda! Jean has been worrying for
+fear Frieda would get lost in London and not come back in time. Years
+ago, when we first came to Europe, Frieda had a tiresome fashion of
+disappearing and getting us all into a dreadful state of mind for fear
+she might be permanently lost. Then she usually turned up quite blandly
+with some agreeable person who had discovered her."
+
+"But, Jack dear," Frank interrupted, as soon as his wife gave him the
+opportunity, "Frieda did not come home with us. Indeed, neither the
+Professor nor I had any idea except that she was with you."
+
+Jack changed color.
+
+"Oh, dear, I do wish Frieda would come in! What do you suppose could
+have happened to her, Frank? She only went into London to attend to some
+mysterious errand which she insisted was very important. I know she
+would not have stayed so late unless something unavoidable had kept her.
+Besides our party, she has never been away from her baby so long."
+
+Man-like, Frank did not appear particularly agitated.
+
+"Oh, Frieda will turn up all right. The good fates have her in charge."
+Then he disappeared to begin his own toilet.
+
+Finishing her toilet as quickly as possible, Jack hurried downstairs.
+
+There was no train now from London until after eight o'clock and dinner
+had been ordered for half-past seven.
+
+In the hall Jack discovered her Professor brother-in-law wandering
+disconsolately about. He wore a mystified and slightly harassed air.
+
+"Do you know, Jack, I am unable for some reason to find Frieda. She is
+not in her bedroom and not in the nursery. Nurse is unable to give me
+any information concerning her, save that she left early in the day for
+London. Curious that she did not telephone me. Will you please find her
+for me? She gave me certain instructions about dressing for dinner
+tonight, which, as a matter of fact, I have forgotten. Am I to wear an
+evening or a dinner coat?"
+
+The distinguished Professor looked so uncertain and so uncomfortable
+that Jack laughed in spite of her own anxiety and annoyance. However,
+she hated to confide Frieda's disappearance to her husband, knowing he
+would be frightened about her.
+
+She was hesitating as to what to reply when there was a sudden noise at
+the front door. Opening it, an excited and somewhat disheveled Frieda
+Russell rushed in and up to her husband.
+
+"Oh, Henry dear, do let me have two pounds, won't you, at once. I know
+it is dreadful to be so extravagant, but so many things have happened to
+me! I had to wait and wait for the things I just had to have for tonight
+and then I missed the last train. I wasn't going to spoil our dinner
+party and so I took a taxi the entire way out from London. I know the
+cabby is robbing me, but he did come very fast and I haven't a great
+deal of my own money left."
+
+The Professor shook his head, not fully understanding all that Frieda
+was saying so hurriedly. But he produced the two pounds and went out to
+settle with his wife's cabman, while Frieda rushed upstairs, calling
+down over the balustrade:
+
+"How is my adored baby, Jack? I have nearly died being separated from
+her such hours! Don't worry, I'll be ready in time for dinner."
+
+Not long after, Frank and Jack were in their library waiting for their
+guests to appear.
+
+Olive and Captain MacDonnell slipped in quietly before the others.
+
+Olive was wearing her wedding gown. But as the affair had been a quiet
+one, owing to the war and to Captain MacDonnell's injury, it was a
+simple dress of white silk and chiffon.
+
+Except for her husband's wedding gift, a brooch of emeralds and diamonds
+in the form of a shamrock, she wore no jewels.
+
+Captain MacDonnell was still lame, would probably always remain so.
+Nevertheless Jack and Frank thought they had never seen their old friend
+looking better or handsomer. Olive's shyness, her seriousness, seemed
+just the spur his Irish wit and gayety needed.
+
+"I do hope, Bryan, you and Olive are going to stay on at home for a time
+now you are safely here," Lord Kent remarked, stretching himself lazily
+in a great arm chair and glancing with an admiration he made no effort
+to conceal from his wife to Olive. "Jack more or less needs some one to
+look after her, since I am giving so much time to my war work I am
+having to neglect my family."
+
+Olive flushed slightly. She knew Frank had not intended it, could not
+dream how sensitive Captain MacDonnell was over the thought that he
+could no longer be of service to his country at a time when she so
+required the knowledge and effort he had once been so gallantly ready
+and able to give.
+
+"Oh, I shall be at home the greater part of the time, and Bryan whenever
+it is possible for him," Olive answered quickly. "But Bryan has already
+promised to begin _camouflage_ work for the government within the next
+few days. We were not in London very long, but were there long enough to
+see a few of Bryan's old friends. They asked him if he would not have
+his commission transferred to the camouflage corps, as they needed him
+at once. I suppose he will be able to do some of the painting here in
+England. But later Bryan will probably have to go over to France to find
+out what is required of him."
+
+"Bully, Bryan! I had not thought of that," Lord Kent answered, appearing
+as tremendously gratified as if he himself had first conceived the idea
+of this work for his friend. He went on to explain to his mystified
+hearers that _camouflage_ consisted of painted artificial scenery used
+to conceal artillery or other important positions from the enemy
+airplanes, and that Bryan was especially fitted to engage in this work
+on account of his military knowledge and artistic ability.
+
+But at this moment Jean and Ralph Merritt joined the little group.
+
+No one spoke of Frieda's being the last to appear, since this had always
+been her custom so long as the other Ranch Girls could recall.
+
+Jean Merritt wore her favorite rose color, a dress of satin with an
+overdress of tulle. And in spite of all the flowers blooming in Kent
+garden, Ralph had not forgotten to bring her a box from London of the
+deep pink roses she had always loved.
+
+However, before dinner was announced the Professor strolled placidly in,
+garbed in entirely proper evening clothes.
+
+"Frieda says if you will be kind enough to wait dinner for her a few
+moments, she will be with you almost at once. There was some little
+errand, some little commission she still wished to attend to before we
+leave the library."
+
+The Professor sat quietly down, asked Frank Kent an important question
+concerning the war and straightway fell into earnest conversation.
+
+However Frieda did make her appearance within a short time. She was
+dainty and lovely as ever in a misty, pale blue gown, but, unlike her
+usual self, she seemed a little embarrassed and apologetic.
+
+The four Ranch Girls and their husbands went into dinner together.
+Perhaps it was absurd that they should feel any especial emotion over so
+simple a matter as having their first dinner party with one another
+since their marriages.
+
+Nevertheless it was true that each girl in her own fashion did feel this
+emotion.
+
+Since Jack's and Jean's few moments in the dining room some hours
+before, a slight change had taken place in the decoration of the table.
+
+Two little silk flags stood near the center; as a matter of course
+under the present circumstances, they were the American and the British
+emblems.
+
+Lord Kent saluted before he sat down, nodding to Captain MacDonnell.
+
+"To our international marriages!" he said. "Long may they wave!"
+
+Then he turned to Frieda and Jean, the Professor and Ralph.
+
+"And to our great American Ally!"
+
+As the little party took their seats they observed a small white velvet
+box near each plate.
+
+Jack opened hers first and discovered inside a tiny pair of crossed
+flags set with jewels.
+
+Glancing toward her husband, Lady Kent discovered that he appeared as
+surprised as she was at the unexpected souvenir of their dinner.
+
+Then she chanced to catch sight of Frieda and Frieda's self-conscious
+expression betrayed her. Moreover, her mission to London was explained.
+
+"I move," announced the Professor gravely, "that we offer a toast first
+to our wives and then to that beautiful and enduring land which has ever
+made the appeal of a woman to her lovers the world over. I mean, of
+course, 'La belle France'."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Obvious punctuation errors repaired. Text sometimes capitalizes Ranch
+with Rainbow Ranch and sometimes does not. This was retained.
+
+Page 27, "anenomes" changed to "anemones" (primroses and anemones)
+
+Page 30, "soceity" changed to "society" (much for society)
+
+Page 50, "unchangable" changed to "unchangeable" (the most unchangeable)
+
+Page 61, "personall" changed to "personal" (her own personal)
+
+Page 64, "hundreth" changed to "hundredth" (hundredth time, that her)
+
+Page 77, "graciousnesss" changed to "graciousness" (graciousness about
+him)
+
+Page 133, "prsented" changed to "presented" (then presented her)
+
+Page 157, "every" changed to "ever" (no one ever pays)
+
+Page 179, "uncertainity" changed to "uncertainty" (amount of
+uncertainty)
+
+Page 189, word "of" added to text (either side of the old)
+
+Page 191, "every" changed to "ever" (who have ever really)
+
+Page 214, "whispering" changed to "whispered" (whispered something in
+her)
+
+Page 221, "persuded" changed to "persuaded" (MacDonnell finally
+persuaded)
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ranch Girls and Their Great
+Adventure, by Margaret Vandercook
+
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