The spell was broken. She jumped to her feet. "Come, we must be getting back," she said hurriedly. "It is late."

"Ah, but how cold you are!"

"Yes, I am, a little," she said innocently. "These woods are damp."

But all the way home, beneath her relief, lingered a sense of annoyance, of disappointment.

"What a prig I am," she thought disgustedly. "It would be all over now if I'd only--let him!"

That night she wrote at unusual length to Mr. Nikolai. It was almost like writing to herself; and Joan frequently felt the need of seeing what she was about set down in black and white, for greater clarity.

She had not meant to tell Mr. Nikolai of her imminent engagement till the thing was _fait accompli_; but she knew that everything would be settled by the time her letter reached him. She wanted to be rea.s.sured about her odd and unexpected emotion during the contact of her hand with Eduard Desmond's. Was it so, then, that people fell in love, just suddenly without any warning? And had the mind nothing to do with it whatever?

For mentally she was not altogether pleased with herself.

CHAPTER XV

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 a.s.surance, 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 role 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 _ingenue_--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 _ingenue_ 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.