No; the languid beauty was her rôle for the next few weeks; and she flattered herself that after several months of Louisville she ought to be able to drop her r's and roll her eyes and flash her dimples with the best, particularly if the audience were not too experienced in Southernism. In school theatricals she had always distinguished herself. Moreover, she had the advantage of a lifelong model to work from; for Richard Darcy was one of those sons of Dixie whose characteristics become more markedly Dixotic the farther they travel from base. Let the Ritters' guest look to her laurels! By way of preparation Joan got out her lip-stick and her powder-puff and did what she could to improve on nature, Betty watching her the while in amused respect. "I'm glad _I_ don't have to mess my face up with things like that," she commented frankly. "But I suppose when one goes in for a real complexion it's got to be taken care of." Joan murmured something explanatory about the ravages of a Southern sun; and so entered upon her brief and eventful career as a Kentucky beauty. CHAPTER XIV Joan's respect for the sterner sex, never very exaggerated, was not increased by the avidity with which they swallowed, one by one, her inexperienced hook, bait and all. Evidently her fellow-men had very little use for nice, intelligent, modest young girls in comparison with the Brazen Hussie.... For Joan had no illusions about herself, either. She had joined, temporarily it is true, and for what seemed to her legitimate reasons, the order of the Brazen Hussies. She put into practice as many of her step-mother's precepts as she could recall, and found that they worked astonishingly well. She also cultivated a beauty-manner, modeling herself on a certain Louisville belle whose manoeuvers she had observed with interest. She became helplessly sweet and very, very feminine; and she smiled whenever there was an excuse for smiling. It was a new smile she had practised before the mirror; an intimate, confiding, personal affair that crinkled up her long eyes charmingly, and showed at least two thirds of her good white teeth. Eduard Desmond occasionally referred to these teeth as "pearls," though they were hard and sharp and strong as a young squirrel's: Eduard being the sort of person who takes his similes ready-made out of poetry.