The discovery of her dependence upon her step-mother marked an end to one period of Joan's existence: the apathetic period. Heretofore she had allowed their daily life, their amusements, their acquaintanceships, to remain in the hands of Effie May. If that lady chose, as she naÏvely put it, to "break into society," and society was willing, Joan was amenable, though a little dubious as to society's taste. She was amenable, that is, so long as she was not called upon too actively to assist in the process. Pride forbade her making any effort to interest or to be interested in people who chose to accept the present Mrs. Darcy as one of themselves. To the Louisville she knew so far, she was merely the appendage of her parents, a captive chained to the triumphal chariot-wheel of her step-mother.

That was all very well so long as she knew that she might snap the chain at any moment and be free. But a dependence that seemed likely to continue indefinitely was not to be borne by what the Major would have called "the proud spirit of a Darcy." Joan, waking in the early dawn, rose and dressed (not in negligÉe), demanded breakfast at an hour when the astonished servants were barely awake themselves, and proceeded to clear her decks for action....

Ellen had sowed a useful suggestion in her brain. There was one freedom open to all young girls who were not too exacting in their demands: the freedom of marriage. Joan decided to marry. She also selected the victim.

It was the first time she had thought of him for weeks; or of "the girls," those heart's companions with whom she had shared for two years her inmost hopes and desires (to say nothing of hats and gloves and handkerchiefs); with whom at parting she had exchanged vows of lifelong fealty. Their letters had accumulated unanswered. In the shock and shame of her father's marriage, she had put away childish things, among them her schoolmates, who seemed in the retrospect immature and puerile. Even Eduard of the interesting past had been put away for the moment with outgrown things, and had remained (fortunately) unthanked for his parting flowers. As for the love-letter which had accompanied them—Joan wondered with a start of dismay what had become of it.

She found it neatly smoothed of its tell-tale wrinkles (the reader will remember that for a day and a night it had reposed against Joan's heart), filed among the letters in her desk, where it had been duly placed after being duly read, doubtless, by one of Mrs. Darcy's efficient housemaids.

The girl studied it with a more dispassionate eye than she had brought to its first perusal:

My flowers must tell you what I dare not, dearest little girl of my heart. You will understand why I cannot say good-by. Truly, "to part is to die a little." Forgive me!—Eduard.

Joan decided that this could not, after all, be called a love-letter; or if so, it was of a noncommittal type distinctly piquing to the vanity. She had given a good many of her precious holidays to the reforming of Mr. Desmond.

"So!" she thought, with a small gleam in her eye. "I was merely a child that amused him for the moment! He was probably laughing at me.... I wonder if he would laugh now?"

She went to her mirror and examined the reflection within impartially.

Something of what she had always candidly recognized as her plainness seemed to have disappeared. She was no longer scrawny, for one thing. Her lazy life of the past weeks, and possibly Effie May's beauty experts, whose ministrations she accepted so ungratefully, had put a gracious covering over her young bones, and she discovered with some excitement the rudiments of a figure. Her straight, burnished hair (she had so far resisted all temptations to "marcel" it) gave her what she fancied a rather distinguÈ air, and her skin had that rare, pale transparency of perfect health which is lovelier even than rosiness. Her eyes had always given perfect satisfaction. She nodded to them in affectionate fashion, as to good friends (she had always fancied that one of them was her brain and the other her soul, and even suspected which was which—the left wearing rather a twinkle, in comparison with the right, which had a mild, innocuous expression). Her mouth was too large.

"But then," she reflected, "large mouths are very much worn by heroines nowadays, and mine isn't mushy or loose at the corners, anyway. There's a draw-string to it."

Of the nose the less said the better. It was merely a nose.

On the whole, standing there in her pretty morning dress, with the grace and freshness of nineteen years about her like an aura, young Joan decided in all modesty that she was one of the women who have their moments, and that such moments ought not to be wasted.

She sat down at once and indited a little note to Eduard Desmond expressing gratitude for "flowers which had meant so much to her," and explaining that she had not written before "because it had seemed best not to"—the inference being that now danger was past, and time had made it safe for her to think of him.

"That," mused Joan nibbling her penholder, "ought to make him sit up and take notice, I should think?" She had been from her cradle something of a student of her fellow-creatures.

She wrote to his niece, her friend Betty, as well; a long, confidential screed, mentioning the fact of her father's marriage without comment and allowing her friend to read between the lines. Betty had an adored mother of her own.

Then Joan rested on her oars and awaited results, which were prompt in coming. Not for nothing had she been the prize letter-writer of her school, entrusted by friend and foe alike with the handling of anything that was most delicate in the way of correspondence.

A few days later she was able to remark to her family that she had been invited to visit her schoolmate, Betty Desmond, at the Desmond country place near Philadelphia.

"The people you spent the Christmas holidays with in Washington? A fine old Irish name," commented the Major, who made something of a specialty of names. "I have not the pleasure of their acquaintance, but I am sure the good Sisters would not have permitted you to visit them if they had not been—ah! desirable acquaintances."

"They are quite rich, if that is what you mean," said his daughter bluntly. Her manner to her father had latterly undergone a change which was not altogether nice.

The Major's eyebrows shot up in pained surprise. "Joan! That is certainly irrelevant, not to say—"

"And there's an eligible young man in the family," continued the girl imperturbably.

He stared at her, speechless. "My child!" he exclaimed after a moment. "One would suppose you were actually—"

"Hunting for a husband? I am," she finished. "What else did you expect me to do?"

A burst of laughter from Effie May relieved the situation. "Of course she's hunting for a husband! All girls are, unless they're lookin' for trouble. Good for you, dearie! You'll land him, too, I'll bet my hat. Men? Lord," she cried, "they're as easy as fallin' off a log, once you get the hang of 'em!"

But the Major continued to gaze at his daughter incredulously. "To think," he murmured, "that I should live to hear my daughter speak in such a manner!" It was evidently not the idea which shocked him, so much as the indelicate expression of it.

Joan rose suddenly and left the table.

Effie May came to her afterwards, intent on comforting. "There, there, girlie, you mustn't mind what your papa says; he's just a man. Besides, he's so genteel in his instincts he's hardly human. Your mamma would have understood, just like I do. She wouldn't of thought you'd said anything unrefined!"

"Thank you," muttered Joan bitterly.

"Why, it's the most natural thing in the world that a girl wants a house of her own, and a man of her own, and so forth! Only most of 'em ain't honest enough to come out flat and say so.... I'm for you, dearie. You're to have the trip, of course, and anything else you want, just let me know. As if I was really your mother—I mean it!"

"Thank you," said Joan again.

It was not the first time she had been disconcerted to find the enemy fighting her battles. What is to be done with an enemy which will not keep its proper place?

Effie May concerned herself in the preparations for departure with a whole-hearted generosity which occasioned Joan some secret pangs of remorse. As a step-relative she knew that she herself had left much to be desired. In vain the girl protested that she had already too many clothes, too much finery.

"Nonsense! A girl can't have too much finery," was the rejoinder. "Even if you don't get to wear all your pretties, it makes you feel sort of easy, sort of good-as-anybody like, just to know you've got 'em in the closet."

With her own hands she ran ribbons and rearranged trimmings and packed, to the secret jealousy of Ellen, keeping up a constant stream of shrewd comment and advice, some of which Joan found worth remembering.

"The trouble with you is, girlie, you think too much," was one of the pearls that fell from her lips. "Just let go and have a good time, and don't take yourself so hard. You can feel as different as you like inside, just so folks don't know it. Folks are sort of leery of what they aren't used to. See?"

Joan often wondered in what school of experience her step-mother had gleaned her curious wisdom.

Ellen Neal was the only one of the three elders who watched her going with any uneasiness.

"Look here, Joan," she said once, abruptly. "When I spoke like I done about marriage being the best thing for a girl, I meant marriage with love, child—marriage with love. Like your mamma's."

The simile was unfortunate. The eye that Joan believed to be her brain twinkled mockingly. "Do you mean to insinuate that marriage and love are not always synonymous? Why, Mrs. Neal, you put so many strange ideas into my young head lately! Seriously," she added, seeing that the other's anxious gravity did not relax, "I don't believe it would be hard to pump up a little love in return for—lots of it, say, and a place of your own in the world, and independence."

"Where there's love there ain't apt to be much independence, I've noticed," remarked the other.

"All the more reason to do without love, then!" cried Joan, with triumphant logic.

But she hugged Ellen remorsefully, glad that the good woman could only guess at what was going on at the moment in her nursling's brain.

Her step-mother's casual advice and her own inner musings had resulted in one firm determination. If she missed romance, experience, all the real things of life, it would not be for lack of meeting them halfway. She would be no longer a passive agent. She would be bold and reckless—even if necessary a little Fast; though how to go about being Fast was somewhat of a puzzle to Mary's daughter.

"If people want to say things, or squeeze my hand, or anything like that," she told herself rather vaguely, "I must remember not to hold back and be standoffish.... How do I know what I like unless I try?"

But while the noun on her tongue was plural and indefinite, the noun on her mind was single and masculine and very definite indeed. It behooved Mr. Desmond to look to himself.