Joan was aware that people were beginning to discuss the affair, and to watch her curiously. It put her on her mettle. She intended to satisfy their curiosity very shortly; but--she wished the thing might be managed without the necessity for so many tête-à-têtes. It was not that she did not like her future husband. On the contrary she liked him so well as to find herself a little shy with him. She preferred his attentions to take place against a background of society; as for instance, at a dance, when his eye could be as significant as it chose without alarming her; or at table, where under cover of the general conversation, they managed some moments of real intimacy. There was much to be said, thought Joan, for the French method of vigorously chaperoning young love up to the very threshold of matrimony. As it was, his foot seemed uncomfortably prone to rest on hers beneath the table; and once when he stooped to recover a dropped fan, his lips had brushed like a touch of delicate flame along the bare length of her forearm--But these indications of what was to come the startled girl was able to ignore as accidental. (She had decided, it will be recalled, to be if necessary a trifle Fast.) At last she steeled herself firmly to the necessity for tête-à-têtes, realizing that even so finished a performer as Mr. Desmond could not well manage a genuine proposal during the intricacies of the tango, or at dinner between the soup and the entrée. There were certain accompaniments, she fancied, that made the idea of a proposal in public impracticable--Joan's imagination was frequently as useful to her as experience. She had managed to escape the perils of horseback riding by an inspired expedient. Duplicity, she found, came easily with practice. "Straddle a horse? Oh, honey, I couldn't!" she had murmured at her most Southern, when informed that there were no side-saddles in the Longmeadow stables. "Why," protested Betty, "there's not a side-saddle to be had this side of Kentucky, Jo--they're as extinct as the Dodo! And even if there were, papa would never allow one on any of our horses. You haven't your habit here, anyway. Do be sensible, dear. I'll let you ride the Rabbit!" Joan shook her head, regretfully but firmly. "If my father were to see a lady of his family straddling a horse, in trousers," she said, "I think he'd have a stroke!"--which was doubtless true. It was necessary, therefore, for Eduard's increasing desire for solitude to take the form of canoeing, or driving in the dog-cart without a groom; or preferably, strolling through a certain bit of near-by woodland. Here he liked to fling himself at his handsome length on the moss at Joan's feet, and read to her chosen bits out of the "Rubaiyat": a work much in favor at the moment, which would appear to have been translated by Mr. Fitzgerald for the express purpose of uttering Mr. Desmond's sentiments.