--a very expensive though small house--in Park Lane. She had
set her heart upon Park Lane; for, you see, there was always something
rootedly Victorian about Di; such as being convinced that Park Lane was
the Mount Olympus of London, and that you couldn't be properly married
except at St. George's. She was, and is, up-to-date only on the surface,
in such details as clothes and hats, and tango, and the latest slang.
Probably Di had never been so happy as in gathering together materials
for her future frame; and if Sidney was chagrined because Father didn't
offer to lend for the honeymoon our ancestral castle (to which he and Di
had frequently alluded in America) he kept his feelings to himself. He
would have been twice as much chagrined by the castle could he have seen
it before Kitty Main got in her deadly work. The Trowbridges of Chicago
would have rejoiced to tell him what it was really like.

I don't quite know why it is the fashion for brides to shut themselves
up and not "go out" for days before the wedding; but perhaps they are
supposed to pass their close time in prayer and maiden meditation,
thanking heaven for what it has provided, and dwelling on the
responsibilities of the future. Di spent her days in being fitted for
frocks (goodness knew who would pay for them, unless Sidney, on ceasing
to be a bridegroom and turning into a husband), receiving wedding
presents, having photographs taken, and giving discreet interviews to
journalists. She told the male ones what a heroic person Major Vandyke
was; and to the female ones she showed her dresses. There wasn't an
illustrated daily or weekly paper in London that didn't produce a
picture of Sidney in uniform, looking dashing, and Di looking down, all
modesty and eyelashes.

The last night she went out to anything big before the wedding was to a
dinner at the Russian embassy; and though nothing which seemed to us
sensationally interesting happened that night, something was led up to
later. It came through Milly Dalziel, for whom Father and Di had
contrived to get an invitation. She met Captain Count Stefan
Stefanovitch, the military attache of the Russian Embassy.

There is something irresistible to some natures about a Russian count;
and to Russian counts about American heiresses, particularly those with
red hair. When the two had seen each other three times they were
engaged, subject to the consent of the count's father. Everybody in that
family was a count or cou