Betty rounded upon her, "You certainly are! I've never seen such a change in any one as a few months have made in you! Sometimes I hardly recognize you for the Jo I used to know at school--so funny and larky, and yet paying no more attention to the boys we used to make eyes at over at the College than if they didn't exist." "College boys _don't_ exist," said Joan gravely. "They're like tadpoles, just a transition state. And rather disgusting." "Not half as disgusting as the Uncle Neds! Look here, Joan," Betty blurted out, "you're not--wanting to get married, are you?" Joan went as pale as the other was flushed. "No," she said in a low voice, "I'm not!" Betty heaved a sigh of relief. "There! That's what I told 'em." (She did not mention whom.) "The Ritters' guest was different. She _had_ to get married, because she'd been visiting 'round for years, and people were getting tired of it, and she couldn't pay for her clothes. But you, at your age, with all the beaux you must have! Why, you wouldn't touch Uncle Neddy with a ten-foot pole." Joan bit her lip. "Why not, Betty?" she asked, quietly. "What's wrong with your uncle? You mean--because he drinks?" Betty looked uncomfortable. She was more of an _ingénue_ than she thought, and found herself getting into deep water. "I don't know exactly," she confessed, "but there's _something_ wrong with him. I don't think he drinks; not more than everybody does, anyway. He's too fastidious--and I'd have noticed if he did. But there are other ways of being dissipated--aren't there?" "I see!" said Joan, wisely; though she saw with some vagueness. Chorus girls, she fancied, models, the artistic temperament, and all that.... On the whole, she felt rather relieved. "That sort of thing ought to be easier to cure than drinking," she mused aloud, "if a man were happily married." "_If!_" repeated Betty. "The question is, could it be done? Well, thank Heaven, _we_ don't have to do it, anyway. I'd hate the job of keeper to Uncle Ned's roving eye!... Ugh, let's not talk about it! Years before you and I have to think of horrid things like marriage--Good night, you bad old flirt," she murmured, kissing her friend. Joan was left with the subtle impression of having been warned. The impression was repeated the next morning when Mrs. Desmond, meeting her on the stairs, remarked with a friendly pat of the arm in passing, "I do wish you'd teach Betty something of the fine art of keeping them guessing, Joan, It's quite wonderful the way you play them all off against each other, and so good for them--particularly Ned! He's rather spoiled, I'm afraid--used to monopolizing his favorites...." Evidently the Desmonds did not intend to take her affair with Eduard seriously. For the first time it occurred to her that this might be because they did not wish to. She was certainly not, to use Betty's significant phrase, "one of them." The girl's head lifted haughtily. She was a Darcy of Kentucky. Surely that was sufficient?