The idea that Betty and her mother were eyeing her somewhat askance troubled Joan not a little. In her heart of hearts she preferred women to men, and believed their friendship more of a compliment. She would have liked to make a friend of Mrs. Desmond, had there been time, envying Betty's camaraderie with her mother; although Mrs. Desmond presented a golfing, bridge-playing, sporting type of motherhood quite new to her experience.

There was a peculiar intimacy and freedom among all this group of people, who seemed to spend most of the year together either in Philadelphia or Aiken or Ormond or these long-established country-places surrounding the Longmeadow Hunt Club. It was like a curiously ramified family, in which husbands and wives seemed to have changed partners rather frequently, and were still in process of changing. It was Joan's first glimpse of a society in which married women hold the center of the stage rather than young girls, and she was just a little shocked by it.

There appeared to be no age limit here. It was not so much that these women concealed their age, after the rather obvious fashion of Effie May, as that they simply ignored it. Even Mrs. Desmond, dignified and well-bred though she was, had a devoted attendant or two, spoken of casually by Betty as "mamma's flames," and during Joan's visit at least Mr. Desmond remained merely an abstraction. Conjugal affection was distinctly not the fashion in the Desmond circle.

But this casualness of relations did not extend to the young girls. They had no such freedom as Joan was accustomed to in the South. Betty, at eighteen, was as carefully guarded as if she were still a child. She was not permitted to go into the city without a maid or an older woman; she neither drove or canoed alone with men, nor "sat out" with them at dances. And it did not occur to her to protest.

"That sort of thing isn't good form," she explained once to Joan. "For us, at least—Of course with Southern girls it's different."

But Joan began to suspect that even Southern girls were expected to hold in regard this one fetish they had elected to worship, Good Form; and that according to this standard she had already been condemned.

At first the younger women had made some effort to include her in their various activities, golf, bridge, tennis. But latterly they had left her alone, not severely but tolerantly, as one dedicated to other pursuits.

"Miss Darcy? Oh, she's from the South, you know—awfully busy with the men," she overheard one of them explain to a newcomer; and she had resented the remark keenly, not only for herself, but for the women of her adopted home, who at least are rarely "busy with the men" after marriage.

The person who made this remark was a Mrs. Rossiter, a pretty, boyish creature, already divorced and remarried at thirty, and bearing her present conjugality rather lightly. She was on terms of great intimacy with the Desmond family, Eduard included; and Joan fancied that she might have been one of the "widows" mentioned by Betty as her uncle's chosen companions.

But if it had been so, her day was done. Eduard had palpably no eyes for her now, and Joan could afford the generosity of admiring Mrs. Rossiter. She was so natural and frank, and so royally indifferent to others' opinion. Joan, who had a fatal propensity for acting as the people about her expected her to act, envied her this assurance, and wished that she could make friends with her.

The truth was that the girl, despite her success, felt utterly lonely. She saw very little of Betty. Mrs. Desmond was an experienced hostess who made no attempt to regulate the comings and goings of her guests, and the girls made separate engagements. Even bedtime confidences had ceased, owing to the fact that when Joan came up to her room, Betty was usually asleep.

But on the night of her illuminating afternoon in the woods with Eduard, Betty appeared to be waiting up for her. She came yawning into Joan's room to watch her friend undress, and established herself sleepily on the foot of the bed.

"What a pity you can't wear your hair down all the time, Jo! Men adore hair, don't they? And yours has a regular patina on it, like old bronze."

"Not greenish, I hope," laughed Joan.

"No—sort of orangish. Dark, with an orange lining."

"Betty! It sounds horrible!"

"Well, you know very well it isn't.—May Rossiter thinks you are awfully clever to wear it that simple way, too, so straight and plain, when the rest of us stick out like mops. She says you're awfully clever about lots of things—too smart for the likes of us."

"Does she?" Joan was a little startled and not quite pleased. She had not intended to give the impression of cleverness. It was out of her present rÔle entirely. "I wonder what Mrs. Rossiter meant by that?"

"Oh, men, of course," yawned Betty. "You see you've annexed a few of hers, which naturally makes her peevish."

"Have I?" murmured Joan. "Who, for instance?"

"Well, Uncle Neddy, for one."

"Oh! So she was one of his flames, then?"

Betty sat up. "You mean to say you didn't know it? One of them! The one, my child! Surely you remember about his broken heart?—the married lady he was recovering from in Washington last year? Well, May's it. Of course I'm not supposed to know, being an ingÉnue—but our Neddy was frightfully gone on her, and she returned it, and the husband she had then got jealous (rather a bounder he was, not one of us, you know), and there was some sort of excitement, and she divorced him. Every one thought to marry Uncle Ned, of course. But instead she upped and married Mr. Rossiter! Joke on Neddy, wasn't it?"

Joan's lip curled. "What a romantic love story! Why do you suppose she married that old Mr. Rossiter?"

Betty shrugged in a worldly-wise manner. "Awfully rich, my dear. And Neddy isn't."

"But they seem friendly enough still, she and Mr. Desmond?"

"Oh, of course. Why not? It would be frightfully uncomfortable for the rest of us if they glowered and didn't speak and all that, like quarreling servants. And Uncle Neddy seems to be consoling himself!" She twinkled at Joan. "That evens things up, you see. But,"—she suddenly grew grave—"what do you get out of all this, Joan? You couldn't possibly like seeing so much of Uncle Neddy! He's such a—softy. And such a bore, too, with his art and poetry and stuff."

"You mean," smiled Joan, "he's too mature for you, dear."

"Too mature for you then, too! You're only a few months older."

The other gave an unconscious sigh. "Oh, me—I'm different."

Betty rounded upon her, "You certainly are! I've never seen such a change in any one as a few months have made in you! Sometimes I hardly recognize you for the Jo I used to know at school—so funny and larky, and yet paying no more attention to the boys we used to make eyes at over at the College than if they didn't exist."

"College boys don't exist," said Joan gravely. "They're like tadpoles, just a transition state. And rather disgusting."

"Not half as disgusting as the Uncle Neds! Look here, Joan," Betty blurted out, "you're not—wanting to get married, are you?"

Joan went as pale as the other was flushed. "No," she said in a low voice, "I'm not!"

Betty heaved a sigh of relief. "There! That's what I told 'em." (She did not mention whom.) "The Ritters' guest was different. She had to get married, because she'd been visiting 'round for years, and people were getting tired of it, and she couldn't pay for her clothes. But you, at your age, with all the beaux you must have! Why, you wouldn't touch Uncle Neddy with a ten-foot pole."

Joan bit her lip. "Why not, Betty?" she asked, quietly. "What's wrong with your uncle? You mean—because he drinks?"

Betty looked uncomfortable. She was more of an ingÉnue than she thought, and found herself getting into deep water.

"I don't know exactly," she confessed, "but there's something wrong with him. I don't think he drinks; not more than everybody does, anyway. He's too fastidious—and I'd have noticed if he did. But there are other ways of being dissipated—aren't there?"

"I see!" said Joan, wisely; though she saw with some vagueness. Chorus girls, she fancied, models, the artistic temperament, and all that.... On the whole, she felt rather relieved.

"That sort of thing ought to be easier to cure than drinking," she mused aloud, "if a man were happily married."

"If!" repeated Betty. "The question is, could it be done? Well, thank Heaven, we don't have to do it, anyway. I'd hate the job of keeper to Uncle Ned's roving eye!... Ugh, let's not talk about it! Years before you and I have to think of horrid things like marriage—Good night, you bad old flirt," she murmured, kissing her friend.

Joan was left with the subtle impression of having been warned.

The impression was repeated the next morning when Mrs. Desmond, meeting her on the stairs, remarked with a friendly pat of the arm in passing, "I do wish you'd teach Betty something of the fine art of keeping them guessing, Joan, It's quite wonderful the way you play them all off against each other, and so good for them—particularly Ned! He's rather spoiled, I'm afraid—used to monopolizing his favorites...."

Evidently the Desmonds did not intend to take her affair with Eduard seriously. For the first time it occurred to her that this might be because they did not wish to. She was certainly not, to use Betty's significant phrase, "one of them."

The girl's head lifted haughtily. She was a Darcy of Kentucky. Surely that was sufficient?

Once in her childhood she had heard her father remark in a moment of especial grandiloquence that Darcys were entitled to the society of kings and queens; and Joan had never doubted the truth of the statement. Something within assured her that she would feel perfectly at ease with any kings or queens who chanced to cross her path. In fact the only people with whom so far she had not felt at ease were snobs and parvenues, under neither of which categories the Desmonds could be placed.

Now she wondered suddenly to what she and her father owed this comfortable sense of lofty destiny. True, theirs was "an old Southern family"; but living in a part of the world that seems entirely populated by such families, this was no distinction. Darcys, she knew, had fought and died for their country whenever occasion offered, but so had quite simple people named Smith or Jones. She racked her brain to think of anything else they might have done for their country, or even for themselves. Genius had never made its appearance among them, nor wealth, nor even beauty, to any noticeable extent. They were rich in one thing only: self-esteem.

Fortunately, however, Joan had her share of that; and upon further reflection she decided that "Darcy" was at least as distinguished a name as "Desmond." Doubtless their ancestors had been kings in Ireland together.

The question of her poverty occurred to her for a moment, only to be dismissed as negligible. The Desmonds were too well-bred to be mercenary. Eduard was not rich himself; and if, as Betty intimated, his reputation was a trifle tarnished, he could not be too exacting in his demands. He could not expect youth, and charm, and wit, and a dowry as well! thought Joan complacently. No: Eduard would be getting quite as much as he gave....

It was in rather a defiant mood that she appeared at dinner that night in a blue chiffon frock which the observant Eduard had pronounced his favorite; and though some people were expected afterwards for dancing, she deliberately accepted his murmured suggestion that they row up the river to see the last of the harvest moon.