are for Eagleston March. Di, however, was to be taken in
to dinner by Major Vandyke, and Millicent Dalziel by Captain March. It
wasn't probable that Milly would give him much chance for talk with Lady
Di, although he was to sit beside her. "Good little Peggy" would have
young Tony, so nice for both of them! and dear Lord Ballyconal would be
placed between his hostess and Mrs. Dalziel.

I ought to have had eyes only for my special prey, Lieutenant Dalziel;
but whether I pleased or bored him seemed so comparatively unimportant,
that before the guests began to arrive, I found my faculties preparing
to concentrate elsewhere. Di hadn't mentioned the name of Major Vandyke
while I did her hair, or melted and poured her into the sparkly frock,
but I felt her consciousness of him in the air; and when his name was
announced at the door of the "cottage" drawing-room, my heart gave a
jump as if it wanted to peer over the high wall of the future.

He came before any of the others, so I had time to make a quick
black-and-white study of him in my brain. I say black and white, because
you would always think of Sidney Vandyke in black and white. An artist
sketching him on the cover of a magazine would need no other colour to
express the man, except--if he had it handy--a dash of red for the full
lips under the black moustache.

"Major Vandyke!" the soft, drawling voice of Kitty's negro butler
proclaimed him; and that was when my heart knocked its alarm. Kitty Main
generally described people in superlatives, so I hadn't been excited
when she remarked that Major Vandyke was the "best-looking man in the
army." But this time, she seemed not to have exaggerated. There couldn't
be a handsomer man in any army or out of it, and a horrid, sly little
voice whispered to me: "What a splendid-looking couple he and Di would
make!"

I was standing far in the background, at a window opposite the door,
while the others were grouped together more in the foreground; and what
I saw was a very tall man (so tall that he could dwarf Eagle March's
five foot ten almost to insignificance), six foot two, perhaps, and--not
stout yet, but showing signs that one day he might become so. I noticed
that he held himself magnificently, his broad shoulders thrown back, his
head up; and that he walked with a slight swagger, more like a
cavalryman than an officer in the artillery. Perhaps it was the electric
light which made his skin look as white as Diana's, without a t