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.