These facts the slow-moving brain of Hughie Marrable absorbed one by one, and he felt vaguely unhappy on the girl's account, though he could not find it in his heart to blame her. Joey, he felt, was merely making full use of her opportunities. Within her small kingdom, and for her brief term, she held authority as absolute as that, say, of a secretary of state, nor was she fettered by any pedantic scruples, such as might have hampered the official in question, about exercising the same; and Hughie, who was something of an autocrat himself, could not but admit that his ward was acting very much, _mutatis mutandis_, as he would have done under similar circumstances. But as time went on and his sense of perspective adjusted itself, he began to discover signs that beneath all her airs and graces and foam and froth, the old Joey endured. She was a creature of impulse, and her vagaries were more frequently due to the influence of the moment than any desire to pose. She would disappoint a young man of a long-promised _tête-à-tête_ on the river, to go and play at shop in a plantation with the under-keeper's children. She would shed tears over harrowing but unconvincing narratives of destitution at the back door. She was kind to plain girls,--which attractive girls sometimes are not,--and servants adored her, which is a good sign of anybody. She was lavishly generous; indeed, it was never safe for her girl friends to express admiration, however discreet, for anything belonging to her, for she had an embarrassing habit of tearing off articles of attire or adornment and saying, "I'll give it to you!" with the eagerness and sincerity of a child. And her code of honour was as strict as a schoolboy's--than which no more can be said. A secret was safe with her. She had once promptly and permanently renounced the friendship of a particular crony of her own, who boasted to her, giving names and details, of a proposal of marriage which she had recently refused. In short, Miss Joan Gaymer strongly resembled the young lady who in times long past was a certain poetical gentleman's Only Joy. She was sometimes forward, sometimes coy,--sometimes, be it added, detestable,--but she never failed to please--or rather, to attract, which is better still. Mrs. Jack Leroy spared neither age nor sex on the night of the Hunt Ball. Her husband, Hughie, and the Reverend Montague D'Arcy--all suffering from that peculiar feeling of languid depression which invariably attacks the male sex about 9.30 P.M. when dancing is in prospect--were hounded into pumps and white gloves, and packed into the omnibus, which, after a drive of seven miles, during which the gentlemen slept furtively and the tongues of Joan and her girl friends wagged unceasingly, deposited the entire party of twelve on the steps of the Town Hall at Midfield.