Jacqueline Ralston stood ankle deep in the rose-touched meadow grass with her straight-forward, honest gray eyes looking into the blue eyes of her companion.
"Did Olive tell you to say that to me? Did she really and truly seem to mean it?" she asked wonderingly.
Frank Kent nodded, not trusting himself to speak, nor wishing to lose an instant's vision of the girl's face, or an inflection of her voice.
Jack had been pale before; but now her face had flushed with such a look of exquisite gentleness and surrender, that in spite of all she had recently endured she had never been so beautiful.
Then it was like her to say with self-evident sincerity: "Of course you are right, Frank dear, I could not hide how much I cared for you even though I have done my best. It will be hard for me to leave the ranch and the people I love, but it would be harder to stay on here—without you!"
CHAPTER XIX
RAINBOW CASTLE
SOME weeks had passed, and it was now early fall at the ranch. But another change had taken place besides that of the seasons, for Jim and Ruth and the Ranch girls had moved away from the old Lodge into their splendid new home.