And Ruth closed her eyes, she and Frieda both dropping off into a gentle doze, while Olive and Jean talked in whispers, and Jack stared out of the window into the darkness.
Since leaving Rome, the five young women had become proverbial Cook's tourists. They had been traveling almost continuously, sight-seeing during every possible hour, and allowing no time for loitering. For after Rome had followed Florence, Venice and then Paris, until now they were on their way to spend the fashionable season in London.
Such rapid journeying had not been Ruth's original idea, but somehow after Jack's experience in Rome it had seemed best to keep her constantly busy, allowing as little time as possible for reflection or argument.
Faithful to her word, Jacqueline Ralston had not seen Captain Madden since the afternoon of her talk with Ruth. At that time, it is true, she had promised to wait only until an answer could arrive from her own and Ruth's letters to her guardian, Jim Colter, but later she had made a further promise to Jim.
Almost from the day of his arrival at the Rainbow Lodge, the overseer of the ranch and afterwards the girls' devoted protector and friend, had had a peculiar understanding of Jack's character. When she was a small girl, insisting on some order of hers being obeyed or angered because it had not been, Jim's "Steady, boss!" used always to help her control herself. For reasonableness was ordinarily one of Jack's strongest characteristics. Always she wished to be just and patient. Her wilfulness came not so much from original sin as because she had had too much her own way as a child and had had to depend too much on her own wisdom.
Her mother had died when she was a very young girl and her father not so many years after. Why, when Jacqueline Ralston was fourteen, virtually she was, under Jim's guidance, the head of a thousand-acre ranch, and a kind of mother to little Frieda and Jean.
So, though Jim Colter was more broken up by the news in Ruth's and Jack's letters than he had been by anything since Ruth's refusal of his love, he wrote to Jack with more tact than you could have expected from a big, blunt fellow like Jim.
It took him almost one entire night, however, to write the letter.
For one thing, he did not say that he believed just what Ruth Drew had written him of Captain Madden, nor did he mention Frank Kent's information, which painted an even worse picture of Jack's friend. Nor did he demand that Jack immediately break off her engagement or stop writing Captain Madden. He simply suggested, as he had in the old days at the ranch, that "the boss go slow" and would Jack agree not to see Captain Madden and not to think of him more than she could help, until Jim himself could find out something more about him? For of course Frank Kent might be prejudiced and Ruth might be mistaken. Jim would see to the whole matter himself, and Jack could surely count on his wanting to give every man a square deal.
Jack had at once agreed to her guardian's request. She realized that Jim's efforts must take time, as he was a long way from proper sources of information. So she had meant to be and had been very patient, trusting that Jim would never believe Captain Madden the kind of villain that Frank Kent had declared him.