She went to her mirror and examined the reflection within impartially.
Something of what she had always candidly recognized as her plainness seemed to have disappeared. She was no longer scrawny, for one thing. Her lazy life of the past weeks, and possibly Effie May's beauty experts, whose ministrations she accepted so ungratefully, had put a gracious covering over her young bones, and she discovered with some excitement the rudiments of a figure. Her straight, burnished hair (she had so far resisted all temptations to "marcel" it) gave her what she fancied a rather distinguè air, and her skin had that rare, pale transparency of perfect health which is lovelier even than rosiness. Her eyes had always given perfect satisfaction. She nodded to them in affectionate fashion, as to good friends (she had always fancied that one of them was her brain and the other her soul, and even suspected which was which—the left wearing rather a twinkle, in comparison with the right, which had a mild, innocuous expression). Her mouth was too large.
"But then," she reflected, "large mouths are very much worn by heroines nowadays, and mine isn't mushy or loose at the corners, anyway. There's a draw-string to it."
Of the nose the less said the better. It was merely a nose.
On the whole, standing there in her pretty morning dress, with the grace and freshness of nineteen years about her like an aura, young Joan decided in all modesty that she was one of the women who have their moments, and that such moments ought not to be wasted.
She sat down at once and indited a little note to Eduard Desmond expressing gratitude for "flowers which had meant so much to her," and explaining that she had not written before "because it had seemed best not to"—the inference being that now danger was past, and time had made it safe for her to think of him.
"That," mused Joan nibbling her penholder, "ought to make him sit up and take notice, I should think?" She had been from her cradle something of a student of her fellow-creatures.
She wrote to his niece, her friend Betty, as well; a long, confidential screed, mentioning the fact of her father's marriage without comment and allowing her friend to read between the lines. Betty had an adored mother of her own.
Then Joan rested on her oars and awaited results, which were prompt in coming. Not for nothing had she been the prize letter-writer of her school, entrusted by friend and foe alike with the handling of anything that was most delicate in the way of correspondence.
A few days later she was able to remark to her family that she had been invited to visit her schoolmate, Betty Desmond, at the Desmond country place near Philadelphia.