Joan, on the other hand, watched her step-mother warily. There was something about the woman she could not fathom, for all her surface simplicity. She felt, beneath the other's careless, easy good-nature, a certain force, a driving power, in the grip of which she and her father were mere helpless puppets. Effie May would use them always for her own ends--whatever those ends might be. Why had she chosen to saddle herself, free and rich and independent as she was, with an impoverished gentleman and his grown-up daughter? Certainly at that age, thought Joan (Effie May was in the neighborhood of forty), people could not possibly fall in love! No, there was something mysterious about her step-mother.... "I have it," said the lady suddenly. "The Country Club! I see in the society column that everything nowadays is going on at the Country Club. We'll have to join that." "I believe," interposed Joan, flushing, "that people have to be invited to join a club, don't they, Father?" "All right--We'll _be_ invited. Won't we, Dickums?" said the bride, with a ravishing smile in the Major's direction. He rose to the occasion. "Certainly, my love," he replied. And they were invited. At any rate, a week or two later found the Darcy family dining alone at the Country Club, among various other little table groups, all of whom seemed to know each other intimately. To be in and not of this friendly assemblage filled Joan with that most miserable of all sensations, crowd-loneliness. Even the Major wore a rather fixed and nervous smile, and mentioned to his wife and daughter at intervals that Louisville society had changed very much since he used to frequent it. Only Effie May seemed quite unperturbed, gazing about her smilingly, and tapping her slippered foot, and nodding her head in time to the music; meeting the curious glances which strayed in their direction with a frank interest of her own which might have seemed bold if it were not so like a pleased child's. Joan, intercepting one or two of these glances, looked her step-mother over critically, and to her relief found her less flamboyant than usual. She was dressed in white--"Handsome white, not girly-girly muslin like yours. I'm too stout for that," she had said wisely to Joan--The girl reflected that it is difficult to look vulgar in white. Mrs. Darcy was not appreciably different in appearance from many another rather overdressed matron there, even in the matter of rouge and touched-up hair.