"Jack, you will try to make yourself as agreeable as possible." Jacqueline Kent laughed: "Frieda dear, don't I always try? And is it fair of you to blame me when I am unsuccessful? But I know you want me to be as staid and well behaved this afternoon as if I were the Dowager Lady Kent, in order to conquer the reputation I seem already to have acquired in the neighorhood. Do they think me a kind of wild west show? Well, I will make my best effort."
The motor in which Olive, Frieda and Jack were driving had by this time entered the grounds of the summer home of Senator and Mrs. Marshall. The house was a big frame building with a wide porch filled with attractive porch furniture and shaded by striped awnings of brown and yellow. The afternoon was a warm and lovely one and apparently the guests were preferring to remain out of doors, as several of them were wandering about in the yard before the house and a number were seated upon the veranda.
As the motor from the Rainbow ranch stopped, Senator Marshall himself, accompanied by Peter Stevens, came forward to greet the newcomers. He spoke cordially of his pleasure in seeing them to Frieda and Olive, but his attention was attracted by Jacqueline Ralston Kent, whom he had known as a young girl.
Senator Marshall was a middle-aged man of distinguished appearance, over six feet tall, with white hair, bright blue eyes and an aquiline nose. Ordinarily his expression was one of good-humored tolerance. Yet Senator Marshall had the reputation for being a dangerous enemy and a man of strong will whom no one dared oppose upon a matter of importance. Notwithstanding the fact that his wife was feared by her neighbors as a woman whose authority no one was allowed to dispute, it was said that, although her husband gave way to her in all small issues, in larger ones she was compelled to do as he wished.
To-day Jack was wearing an afternoon dress of black tulle over black silk, and a large black hat, which made her skin appear exceptionally clear and fair and her hair a deeper gold brown.
"It was kind of you to come to see us the other afternoon, Mrs. Marshall, and I am sorry to have missed you," Jack said a little shyly a few moments later, when Senator Marshall had taken her to speak to his wife, leaving Peter Stevens to follow with Frieda and Olive. It was a misfortune from which Jacqueline Ralston had suffered as a girl and which she never had entirely conquered, that she was apt to feel less at ease with women than with men, as if they understood her less well and criticized her more severely.
Now as Mrs. Marshall returned her greeting, although perfectly polite and cordial, Jack had an instinctive impression that the older woman saw something in her which she did not like, or else had heard something previously which had prejudiced her.
"I am glad to meet you at last, Mrs. Kent. Considering the fact that you have been in the neighborhood so short a time I seem already to have heard a great deal of you."
If there was no double meaning in the words which were simple in themselves, nevertheless Jack flushed slightly.
"But I am not a stranger in this neighborhood, Mrs. Marshall. I knew your husband a long time ago when my father was alive and I was a little girl trying to help manage our ranch. I don't think I forgave you for many years, Senator Marshall, because you were one of the lawyers on the other side when we had a difficulty over the boundary line of our ranch."