Shortly the old lady whose daughter might have been Joan's age if she had lived, invited Joan to be her guest in the dining-car, and was repulsed, coldly and firmly. One hears such tales of wicked old harpies on trains leading trustful girls into the most frightful predicaments! "No, thank you," said our heroine. "I never have much appetite on trains." Soon the car was quite empty, and Joan, mopping the last of the tears from her eyes, selected the largest of the chocolates and drew from some recess of her person a white-headed pin. There was also, to be discussed later, a packet of sandwiches, typical Convent affairs--large slabs of bread embracing pale and clammy ham. Joan thought of these with resignation. The odor of broiling beefsteak came back from the car ahead rather poignantly. Joan had lied to the old lady. At eighteen, with every nerve and organ in healthy coöperation, appetite is not likely to fail, on trains or elsewhere. Nor was it as if she did not have the necessary dollar in her pocket. Major Darcy always managed to rise to the occasion somehow when the ladies of his family went traveling. He had a horror of gentlewomen finding themselves among strangers temporarily embarrassed for funds--quite a different affair from a permanent condition of the sort when in the home circle. She knew that it was expected of her to spend her dollar in riotous living; but she could not forget (the Joans of the world never can forget) that a dollar is the price of a pair of white gloves or a pair of silk stockings. And so she munched her sacrificial sandwiches with a considering eye on the future. CHAPTER II Later, as she lay propped up in her snug little berth (far the pleasantest part of the journey to Joan), with her shade up for fear of missing anything of the mysterious night that passed outside--strange, silent cities, isolated farms asleep in the starlight, the glow of smelting fires as they flashed by, like a startling glimpse into the infernal regions--it suddenly occurred to Joan that her father had been unprecedentedly lavish in his provision for her journey home. "Money for good-by presents to all the girls; money for ticket, and sleeper, and tips, and ten dollars besides--goodness! Dad must have struck something!" she mused, deciding that it was really business that kept him from coming to see her graduate, and not, to put it delicately, the lack of business. In the Darcy family things were always put delicately. The mention of cost was deprecated. One never said crudely that a thing could not be afforded. One "preferred not to bother about it just then," or one "liked last year's hat so much better than any in the shops," or one "enjoyed the freedom of being without servants for a while--it was a relief."