The Major was honestly aghast. "Leave your father's roof?" he cried incredulously. "My child! What is this folly? Never with Richard Darcy's consent shall a daughter of his leave her father's roof except for the roof of her lawful husband." (In moments of emotion, the Major was always liable to these attacks of circumlocution.) Joan pointed out to him, still faintly but determinedly, that it was not her _father's_ roof she wished to leave.... Even under his armor of complacency this shot told. He winced. "Have you been made to feel that? Has my wife ever caused you to believe that you were an unwelcome member of our household?" he demanded sharply, in a voice that boded ill for the present Mrs. Darcy if such were the case. "No, Father! I shall never give her the chance to make me feel unwelcome. That is why I want my mother's money." The Major toyed with a pen, and seemed to be thinking. "I am not at all sure," he said presently, "that the will Mary left was legal, my dear; whether it would stand in the courts--" "What does that matter?" interrupted Joan, "when you and I know what Mother meant?" Something impelled her to add, "And when Ellen Neal knows, too?" The Major looked quickly at her, and looked away. "Perhaps you are not aware that regardless of any will whatsoever the law entitles me to one-third of my wife's estate?" Joan flushed with an embarrassment that was more for him than for herself. "You're welcome to it, Daddy; you're perfectly welcome to it, of course! It isn't that I want to take anything away from _you_. It's--oh, won't you _please_ understand, and not be hurt with me?" she implored. "I only want to know how much there is, how much money I can count on getting every month to live on. Just income, you know. I wouldn't think of touching the--principal, don't you call it?" Richard Darcy rose abruptly and went to the window. It was a fine view that spread before him--a soothing, mellifluous landscape of golden river and hazy blue Indiana hills. Indiana, as he sometimes remarked, was delightful as a background though undesirable as a dwelling-place. He said so now. He had taken this office entirely for its view, he informed his daughter. The Major patronized Nature extensively, and believed that all gentlemen should do so; especially Kentucky gentlemen, to whom Nature has been so particularly lavish. Meanwhile Joan waited. He recalled that her mother used to have the same habit of silent waiting. Some minds seem incapable of pleasant digression.