Jacqueline Ralston did not look entirely like the brilliant, vigorous Ranch girl who three years before had ridden alone across the prairie to search for her lost cattle. She had less color in her cheeks, perhaps, except under the pressure of some unusual excitement, but her hair was a deeper bronze, her eyes a clearer gray, and her rather full lips a brighter crimson. There was something about her expression not always easy to understand. The old wilfulness was still there, the old habit of knowing her own mind and wishing to have her own way, but with it a greater power of self-control than most girls of nineteen have--and something else. What this other trait was neither Jack herself nor her friends yet knew. This trip abroad might mean more to her than to any one of the other four girls. In spite of her lameness, which was never apparent except when she was greatly fatigued, Jack was tall--five feet seven inches--and held her shoulders with the erectness of other days. Slender, Jack would always be, but not thin, for sixteen years of outdoor life had given her too fine a beginning.
In each person's atmosphere or aura, if you prefer to call it so, there is usually a suggestion of some one distinctive quality, some characteristic that shows above all others. With Jacqueline Ralston it was purity. She was straightforward and unafraid, without cowardice and without suspicion. Having once believed in you, Jack would stand by you through thick and thin. More than anything in the world she hated a lie. For some reason she had always been and always would be what for want of a better word is called "a man's woman," meaning that men would understand and sympathize with her point of view and she with theirs.
Olive Van Mater was just the opposite of Jack. Although the story of her strange early life was now fully explained, she would never lose her shyness and look of gentle mystery. Nor would she ever be able to make friends among strangers so readily as the three other girls. Many persons there would always be who would explain her shyness as coldness and a lack of interest. Still she could reveal herself more easily to girls and to women than to men. And although her peculiar beauty and sweetness could not fail to win her admirers because of her sympathy and self-forgetfulness, all the days of her life her own sex would make the strongest appeal to her.