Jeanette knew her father made this speech to re-establish their former intimate relation. She felt a little glow of pleasure, a momentary forgetting of the intensity of her own self-absorption.
A few moments they walked silently up and down the long avenue between the cottonwood trees.
Not far away the lights from the big house, Rainbow Castle, were beginning to show in the windows. In the sky the colors of the after-math were less bright than the earlier sunset.
At a greater distance Jeanette could spy the softer, darker outline of the old house known as Rainbow Lodge, once the home of the original group of Ranch Girls. At present it stood empty and forlorn.
In her revery Jeanette was making no effort to deceive herself.
She appreciated that she was not wishing to leave home immediately merely because she disliked her stepmother and the change her father's marriage had wrought in her own life. For the first time in her life she understood the meaning of fear. Daily, hourly, she was afraid that her stepmother might betray what she had done. She was afraid that Cecil Perry might have some knowledge of her dishonorable behavior and refer to the fact.
She was even afraid that she might betray herself. Such an impulse had lately swept over her when her father had spoken of her high sense of honor.
At least with herself Jeanette made no effort at pretense. She simply accepted the fact that she had not played fair, but wished no one to discover the truth. Of course one might argue that a riding contest was not of sufficient importance to take so seriously. This was not Jeanette's point of view.
She had not played the game. She had not won honestly. The contest and the desire to win had appeared so important to her that she had broken her own rules of self-respect.
With a slight start Jeanette came to herself. Her father was speaking and would expect an answer.