Joan suddenly doubted whether her father's cousins would welcome her under their roof at the risk of alienating that limousine. She did not blame them—poor, anxious ladies to whom life had not been very kind. She simply realized that they were of her father's blood, not her mother's.
Her mother's people she did not know. Mary Darcy had managed somehow in her wanderings to loosen all the ties that bound her to her youth. It was as if she had deliberately lost herself, hidden herself away with husband and child from the loving eyes that are too quick to see.... It was the sort of pride Richard Darcy was quite incapable of understanding, though pride was a word often upon his lips. But Mary's daughter understood. Never through her should the quiet tragedy of her mother's life be revealed to those from whom her mother had chosen to hide it.
She wished that Stefan Nikolai were not a man; or that, being a man, he had a home to which she might have invited herself. But he was a confirmed wanderer, and Joan felt that a young lady companion, desirable though she might be as a solace for his declining years, would undoubtedly hamper his movements.
It left only Ellen Neal to rely upon. Perhaps there would be enough money to take a little flat somewhere, with Ellen Neal for servant and chaperone. A bachelor maid, with a latch-key!—the prospect was rather alluring. But not in Louisville. She could not leave her father's home and set up an establishment of her own in the same town without creating "talk," and, to Joan's training, "talk" was the one thing impossible.
They would have to go away somewhere, she and Ellen. And study something, she decided vaguely. Music, art, social service—whatever it was people did study. Her eye began to kindle. She was the true child of Richard Darcy, rolling stone by nature and profession; and to such, "the grass is always greener down the road." New York, Boston, swam before her dreamy vision; even London, Paris, Rome....
She brought herself back to the ungrateful consideration of ways and means. She feared the money would not run to much in the way of travel. "A mere pittance," her father had once scornfully called it. But she knew, or guessed, that all three of them had managed to live on the income from this pittance during many a period when the Major's star was not in the ascendant, and she thought that what had provided, however scantily, for three might be made to provide well for herself and Ellen. She wished that she had asked questions at the time her mother's will was read to her. It had seemed so unimportant then. What was hers belonged surely just as much to her father, guardian for the little property until such time as she chose to ask him for it.
Now that the time had come, Joan faced it with some dread. How could they talk about money, she and he—about her mother's money? It seemed indelicate, unfeeling, a desecration of sacred things. Nevertheless she faced it. She solemnly promised herself that not another day should pass without a complete understanding between herself and her father.
Possibly she was the only one of Richard Darcy's creditors who ever managed to put this promise into execution.