"And where can you be more independent than under your father's roof?" he demanded. "Free to come and go as you choose, free to entertain your friends as you like, to make what purchases you will, to run up accounts at the shops--" "And without a penny I can call my own!" blurted out Joan. "As to that," he remarked with a shrug of distaste, "you have merely to come to your father, my child." "Exactly," said Joan bitterly. Here Effie May entered the arena, fighting as usual upon the side of her victim. "The girl's right. She ought to have her own allowance--as you were saying only last night, Dickie." "Was I?'" murmured the Major. "Yes, yes, so I was! An allowance of--How much did I say, my darling?" "Two hundred dollars a month," prompted his darling. "Do you think you could manage on that, Joan?" The girl lifted shamed eyes to her step-mother. She could not bear to look at her father, puffing himself out with conscious pride. "Very well," she said in a low voice. "I'll be a débutante since you wish it--I'll spend the money and wear the clothes you provide, and eat the food you give me--but understand me! I'm only doing it because I have no choice." She suddenly turned and ran out of the room. The Major stared after her, blankly. "What's come over the child? She used to be so sweet-tempered and reasonable, grateful for everything. All this nonsense about independence! What does she mean by it, anyway?" "She simply means she wants a man of her own, like every blessed mother's daughter of us," explained Effie May comfortably, "and that's what I'm trying to help her to, and it makes her sort of ashamed because she's got to be helped. That's all!... Say, old pet--" she seated herself upon his knee, as was her cosy custom when opportunity offered--"who's this chap Nikolai, anyway, that's always writing to her? He gives her some pretty good presents. That piece of aquamarine he sent her when she graduated--it's worth a lot of money. Is he rich?" "He's a very successful writer, I believe." "Hmm! Old? _Too_ old, I mean?" "For what?" "Why, for Joan, old duckie." "Joan?" repeated the Major vaguely. He had for the moment lost interest in his daughter's affairs. The ex-widow Calloway made rather a luscious armful. He roused himself to the required attention, however. "For Joan? Why, good gad! the man's old enough to be her father! He was a friend of Mary's." "Before she married you?" "Oh, no, afterwards. She picked him up somewhere when Joan was a baby." "_Oho!_" murmured Effie May with an indescribable expression. "I didn't know Mary was the sort to have friends after she was married!" (It is just possible that the bride was rather fed up on the virtues of her predecessor.) But a sudden stiffening of the arms that enfolded her warned her of rocks ahead, and she finished smoothly, "I thought she was too interested in you to know that any one else existed."