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 pa.s.sing, "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 ent.i.tled to the society of kings and queens; and Joan had never doubted the truth of the statement.

Something within a.s.sured 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 sn.o.bs 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 p.r.o.nounced 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.

CHAPTER XVI

There had naturally been some discussion at the Convent as to the most desirable setting for proposals, the consensus of opinion being in favor of Miss Alcott's little water-scene between Amy and the faithless Laurie. Laurie, the reader will remember, is rowing Amy about in the romantic region of Chillon (still with regretful memories of Jo hovering in the background, however), when she catches him eyeing her with an expression which

"makes her say hastily, merely for the sake of saying something:

"'You must be tired; rest a little and let me row,' etc.

"'I'm not tired, but you may take an oar if you like,' etc.

"Feeling that she had not mended matters much, Amy took the offered third of a seat, shook her hair over her face" (Joan personally suspected that Amy belonged also to the order of the Brazen Hussies) "and accepted an oar.

"'How well we pull together, don't we?' said Amy, who objected to silence just then.

"'So well that I wish we might always pull together in the same boat. Will you, Amy?' very tenderly.

"'Yes, Laurie,' very low.

"Then they both stopped rowing, and unconsciously added a pretty little tableau of human love and happiness to the dissolving views reflected in the lake."

This cla.s.sic scene was not absent from Joan's mind as she seated herself and her blue chiffon recklessly in the prow of Eduard's canoe; though the details of stage-management troubled her somewhat. Suppose the proposer chose to kneel at the feet of the proposee--since there was no seat to share with her? And suppose the proposer lost his head (as might properly be expected of him) and embraced the proposee madly--what was to prevent so precarious a thing as a canoe from tipping over! It seemed to call for great presence of mind on the part of the proposee. Joan felt rather nervous.

Mr. Desmond, however, let the opportunity pa.s.s. Perhaps he had not read "Little Women."

Amid talk so casual that it might as well have been silence, they slipped along between the wide gray of earth and sky, afloat on a stream of silver. They came presently to an overhanging willow, where he tied the boat, and helped Joan ash.o.r.e. He led her, with an air of one performing a ceremony, up a slight rise of land topped by a great beech-tree, whose widespread roots made a sort of armchair, after the hospitable fashion of beech-trees.

"Queen Joan on her throne, viewing her domain," he murmured.

He had not brought her to this place before, and she realized that he had been saving it for a special occasion. There was a view before her of shadowy, dreaming country, with a hint of stars to come, and sheep-bells tinkling in a distant field, and lights gleaming here and there from half-hidden houses.

Eduard began to murmur softly:

"When the quiet-colored end of evening smiles, Miles on miles O'er our many-tinkling meadows where the sheep Half asleep, Wander homeward through the twilight, browse and crop As they stop--"

A sudden impatience seized Joan. How like him to arrange this setting, to bring things carefully to a climax, and then--to spout Browning at her!

But she said, as he paused, "Beautiful! 'Love among the Ruins,' isn't it?"

"Yes--And I," he sighed, tapping himself on the chest, "I am the Ruins!"

Despite the bombast of his tone, there was something in his sigh that struck her as genuine.

She said consolingly, "At least you're a well-preserved ruin, very popular with tourists.... I wonder what makes you feel so particularly ruinous to-night?"

"The fact that you're so d.a.m.nably young," he muttered.

She made a little face at him. "I'm not, really. I'm one of those persons who are born grown-up, you know. Besides, it's a fault that will disappear in time."

"Exactly! And before you know it, my dear.

"'The nightingale that in the branches sang--ah, whence and whither flown again, who knows!'

"You oughtn't to be here with me," he said abruptly. "You ought to be back there, playing with the little boys and girls."

"But if the boys and girls bore me--?"

"Do they?" he demanded. "Those chaps you dance and flirt with--?"

Joan made him the present of a very special smile. "Perhaps that was to make other people--jealous."

"You darling!" he said under his breath; but still he did not touch her.

"'Love among the Ruins' really isn't very beautiful," he said after a moment, "or very natural, either--as my sister-in-law was very good to point out to me only this morning!"

Joan flushed. So Mrs. Desmond was taking not only a pa.s.sive but an active interest in her affairs!

"Your sister-in-law is needlessly solicitous. I'm not a child like Betty. I know exactly what I am doing."