Richard Darcy was accepting the change that had come into his life much as he had accepted others of a less fortunate trend. He had become at last what Nature had always intended him to be, one of the world's chosen, a rich man--or, what was even better because less troublesome, the husband of a rich woman. He was also once more an honored citizen of his native commonwealth--where he had not always been entirely an honored citizen, owing to one of the unfortunate mistakes to which youth is liable. There had been some disagreement with an early employer about the right of employees to divert the firm's funds, temporarily of course, to private uses. Only family influence had prevented this misunderstanding from resulting in truly disastrous consequences, which he shuddered to this day to contemplate. But it had prevented; and the early employer was dead (as Richard Darcy had taken pains to ascertain before returning to Louisville), and the few who knew of this painful episode at the time appeared to have forgotten it. Very good! He was quite willing to forget it himself. It was Richard Darcy's creed that a gentleman takes whatever comes in his stride, without too many backward glances; and his stride was just now adapting itself gracefully to the one-step. Joan, watching her father sometimes with a faint recrudescence of pride in his sheer good looks, decided that he was the only stomached person she had seen who could perform the one-step without loss of dignity. He footed the measure indulgently, as a bishop or a cardinal might have footed it, with an air of spiritual detachment, as it were, while yet seeming to receive and to bestow a priceless privilege. Even lively young girls liked to dance with the Major. It made them feel uplifted. If he pressed the hand or the waist of his prettier partners more closely than necessary, the pressure seemed almost impersonal, a mere tribute to a sex which he could not but regard with tenderness, being himself a husband and a father. In addition to this valuable social acquirement, the Major further fortified his popularity by inventing and promoting (uncommercially, of course) a beverage which shortly bade fair to make him famous, and which was christened by grateful habitués of the Country Club the "Dick Fizz." Its ingredients were--but that is a secret not at the author's disposal. Suffice it to say that the "Dick Fizz" achieved results that were all and more than could be expected of it. (Among others, the Major's election to a certain gentlemen's club which had hitherto remained annoyingly unaware of him. So much for the power of the Tie that Loosens!) It was thanks to the "Dick Fizz," too, that there presently came about between Richard Darcy and his daughter that heart-to-heart interview which had been postponing itself from week to week, with the tacit consent of both parties; an interview dreaded by Joan perhaps even less than by her father.