To-night she had another reason. She was dreading to meet the young girls who were her stepdaughters.
She had known them before in the year she had spent with her son, Jimmie, at the Rainbow Lodge. Yet there had been no intimacy between them. She was not particularly sympathetic with young girls and had been busy with her own affairs. They had been friendly, but she never had tried to understand their different dispositions.
At the time her own sister, Frieda, who was now Mrs. Henry Tilford Russell, had been living at the big house with her husband and little girl. Jean, her cousin and a former Ranch Girl, had kept house at Rainbow Castle for Jim Colter and his motherless daughters.
Frieda and Jean not only understood the new Ranch Girls better than she did, but were more admired and loved by them.
Even then Jack realized that they did not enjoy her friendship with their father, which had ended with their marriage.
If the sound of their arrival was heard inside the big house, no one came to the front door to open it for the home-comers.
Jim Colter unlocked the door and he and Jack entered.
The drawing-room was lighted and the door partly open.
Stepping forward, Jack pushed it farther apart.
Inside the room four girls were seated.