"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.