One thing almost reconciled her to the distasteful idea of entering further into the social world under the wing of her step-mother, and that was the gratification, the artless delight, taken by her father's cousins in the idea of assisting at a Galt House Ball, almost in the capacity of hostesses. There was something piteous to the girl, though humiliating, about the three little spinsters' unflagging interest in the amusements of people who had forgotten, if they ever knew of, the Misses Darcys' existence. Despite their long retirement from what they called "the polite world," these ladies were inveterate students of the social column, and constituted in themselves a complete local edition of "Who's Who."

Whenever Joan went to see them—which was rather often nowadays, for her late experience had had the not unusual effect of softening her comprehension, while it hardened her surfaces—they greeted her with eager gossip, such as: "I see the little Jones girl is to be married at last!" or, "The paper doesn't mention your name at the Smiths' cotillion last night.... Surely you were there?"

In their eyes she was evidently a most romantic figure, the embodiment of gaiety and youth and of all they had hoped but somehow failed to be. They exclaimed with quite personal delight over her frocks, her pretty underthings, her dainty shoes, the silver-fox furs Stefan Nikolai had sent her from Siberia.

"You're going to be one of the belles of the winter!" prophesied Miss Virginia raptly. "I can tell from the way the paper speaks of you already! 'Miss Darcy, the fascinating daughter of Major and Mrs. Richard Throckmorton Darcy, lately returned from the East'—etc. Clothes do help so much," she added wistfully. "I sometimes think that if dear papa had been able to manage better dresses for us—" She left her remark unfinished, a conversational characteristic of all the Darcy ladies.

"You must remember that dear papa had three of us to provide for, whereas Cousin Richard has only one," reminded Miss Iphigenia loyally. "Besides, you were too pretty to need anything but the simplest white muslins, Virgie. Fine dresses would not have been half as becoming."

"What nonsense, Genie!" blushed her sister. "I'm sure you didn't need clothes any more than I did, with all your beautiful hair."

Joan's evil imagination pictured her Cousin Iphigenia frequenting the polite world clad, like the Lady Godiva, chiefly in hair, and she chuckled; but at the same time she kissed both ladies impulsively.

This was one of the things that brought her to the dingy house so frequently; the atmosphere of affectionate appreciation that warmed it. In her father's family—and it was one of the Darcys' undoubted charms—all geese were swans, and they put not only their own but each other's best foot foremost with a touching unanimity. The three sisters regarded each other as paragons, exceeded in degree only by their first cousin Richard, who, in addition to being a Darcy, was likewise a man, and by their first-cousin-once-removed Joan, who in addition to being a Darcy was young. As to their cousin Richard's new wife—the name she had assumed in marriage banished before birth any qualms they might have felt as to her inborn qualifications for the polite world. A Darcy could naturally do no wrong.

One of the things Joan liked best in Effie May was her consistent kindness to these rather tiresome and unimportant spinsters. "Buying them!" she had thought at first. But after all why should any one trouble to buy them? Hers was not entirely a material kindness, either. She consulted them faithfully in social matters, even in household matters (though the Misses Darcy were not notable housekeepers). She and the Major and the limousine accompanied them occasionally to church, the only form of social dissipation in which they still indulged. Altogether she exhibited in dealing with them a tact which in anybody else Joan would have attributed to good breeding.

One morning, when the girl stopped in to make her cousins a visit, the opening door revealed an unusual amount of chatter coming down from the floor above; soft, pretty chatter (like her father, the Darcy ladies had charming voices), mingled with the steady hum of a sewing-machine.

"What's up, Susy?" she asked the languid colored slattern who let her in.

"De ladies is gittin' ready fo' de ball, I'specks, Miss Joan, fittin' on dey new dresses."

"New dresses? A ball?" repeated the surprised Joan, who did not connect these activities with her own dÉbut, scheduled to take place a month or so later. "I must investigate!" and ignoring Susy's best efforts to toll her into the parlor, she pursued the chatter to its source.

She avoided that parlor whenever possible, having earlier exhausted its charms. It was a rather dismal chamber, with shutters always closed against a too-revealing sunlight. Innumerable small tables and a double mantel-shelf were crowded with articles of vertu in the shape of hand-painted vases, and ginger-jars, and marble hands. On the walls, concealing as much as possible of the original decoration, hung specimens of all the artistic aspirations of the Darcy family and friends; "Yards of Pansies," still-life studies of a fan in interesting juxtaposition to a coal-scuttle, and the like. Concealment seemed to be the motif of the decoration-scheme. The fireplace was concealed by moribund cat-tails, the former usefulness of a spinning-wheel was concealed by gilt paint, the function of the lamp was concealed, if not permanently impaired, by a ruffled blue silk petticoat reminiscent for the best of reasons of a certain blue silk party-dress that had once done yeoman's service in the family.

The elegance of their parlor enabled Joan's cousins to ask several dollars more a month for their rooms than did any other house in the square; but Joan, who, had inherited from the maternal side a strain of practicality, positively ached in her joints at the thought of the hours it must take to thoroughly sweep and dust it—if indeed it ever were thoroughly swept and dusted.

She poked her head around a door that stood ajar on the third floor: "May I come in?"

The three turned startled faces to greet her, two in dressing-sacks whose fronts bristled with pins, the third in a costume which seemed vaguely familiar, a dress which glittered with jet sequins and was cut so low that it was perhaps fortunate Miss Euphemia had neglected to remove her gray flannel underwear.

"Why, Joan!" they chorused, dismay mingling with their welcome. (Even in conversation they were a most united family, speaking usually all three at once.) "However did you find your way up here? That stupid Susy should have shown you into the drawing-room!—or at least have announced you, so that you would not have caught us like this."

"Nonsense! Susy tried to shoo me into the parlor, but I wouldn't be shooed; and as for 'announcing' me—she did howl up the stairs. But you were too engrossed to hear." The naÏve respect with which they treated their prosperous young cousin always mortified Joan. She had her own conception of the family dignity. "You'd suppose I'd never seen a dressing-sack or a sewing-machine in my life, whereas I was raised on 'em.—My word, Cousin Euphie, how grand you are!"

"Am I, dear? The dress is grand, I know," said Miss Euphemia doubtfully, "but I'm not sure it's quite in my style. The others thought I'd better have it because I'm plumpest, in the—in the chest, you know. But really, the waist!—There simply isn't any, Joan! What would you suggest?"

"A yoke," said the girl gravely.

"Just what I said!" twittered Miss Iphigenia. "Yokes are being worn, or I'm certain Joan wouldn't have suggested it. A guimpe of black net perhaps—tucked, would you say, Joan dear!—and long wrinkled sleeves of the same. Which would do away with the necessity for long gloves, girls!"

This happy thought was greeted with acclaim. "How clever of you, Genie! We can all have guimpes and long sleeves? You see, three pairs of long white gloves—" they explained to Joan.

"Of course!" she said hastily, making a mental note to supply her cousins with long white gloves if she had to ask her step-mother for the money.

They showed her the other dresses eagerly; an amber-colored satin—"With slippers to match, my dear!"—and one of old-rose brocade which Miss Virginia almost kissed in her affection for it.

"I sometimes think if I could have had a dress like this earlier—" she murmured. "Though of course my real color, like yours, Joan, was blue. A blue sash, and a pink rose in the hair. As General Fitzhugh Lee once said to me at a Galt House ball—"

"No, wasn't it at the Governor's Inauguration, sister?" interposed Miss Euphemia.

In the gentle altercation which ensued, Joan never heard just what the gallant general had said to her cousin Virginia; but she suspected it of having some connection with blue eyes.

"You're a lucky girl to be presented at a Galt House ball!" they exclaimed presently, returning to the subject in hand. "And Cousin Effie May has really been too sweet about it. Insists, simply insists that we shall all three of us stand up with her in the receiving line! Says she'd be terribly shy without us." (Joan smiled faintly at the picture of Effie May being shy.) "We said to her, 'No, my dear, one of us is quite enough. We'll draw straws for it, as we always used to.' Dear papa never let all three of us go to the same party. As he said, 'It's too much of a good thing!' (Slang, you know.) But she assured us that she had three evening dresses she couldn't get into,"—it was Miss Euphemia speaking at the moment, quite unaware of any naÏvÉtÉ in the sequence of her remarks,—"and that it would be a real kindness on our part to take them off her hands. You know, dear, Cousin Effie May really is getting a little stout. And she says it's such a problem to know what to do with outgrown party dresses."

"It certainly is!" agreed Miss Iphigenia, as if it were one that weighed upon her heavily. "You simply can't give things of that sort to the poor."

"Why not?" murmured Joan, "if the poor would enjoy them?"

They all rounded on her. "Why, but dear child, it wouldn't be suitable! It would give the poor ideas beyond their station. Fancy presenting a spangled net evening-gown to—Susy, say! It would never do!"

"I suppose not, because she would certainly burst with joy. But think," mused Joan, "what an enviable death!"

The Darcy ladies looked at her uncertainly. They were never quite sure whether their young cousin was jesting or not. They preferred people to laugh when they joked. It made things clearer.

"Never mind," the girl added hastily. "Susie's not going to get these magnificent costumes, anyway!—and I am so glad you are coming to my ball, dears. We'll be a whole family of dÉbutantes!"

Afterwards she realized soberly how near her pride had come to depriving these innocent ladies of a real pleasure. Pride, she reflected, may be very close kin to selfishness. She postponed her own plans a while longer.