ntess, a delicious prospect for Milly when she
wished to talk of her Russian relatives. Stefan was to stay and see
Milly in her bridesmaid's dress; then he was going to make a dash for
Petrograd (we called it St. Petersburg then!) armed with her photograph
and substantial accounts of her father's bank balance, returning as soon
as the consent was insured. There seemed to be something almost feudally
old-fashioned about Russians, Milly thought, for a mere wire to _her_
father had been considered adequate. But then, Tony Senior wasn't a
count or a "vitch," or anything exciting like that.

It was after this dinner that I began to prowl for banana peel. I hadn't
wanted to be premature; still, it was necessary to give some other girl
time to get a bridesmaid's dress. Just then the only thing in London
that anybody cared about was the Russian opera and ballet, and it
occurred to Di that it would be original to clothe her eight attendant
maidens in Leon Bakst designs. Most of the girls were pale blondes, whom
she had chosen because they would form an effective contrast to herself;
but they were very brave about the Bakst effects. The measure of their
fingers had been taken, and they were expecting presents of rings
beautiful enough to console them for worse disasters. Besides, Sidney
had brought over from America a Captain Beatty to be his best man. He
was rather rich and very good-looking.

During all this time of our new popularity I had heard nothing of Eagle
March, except that he had turned his back on his native land after
resigning from the army, and that various "ugly stories" were in
circulation. It was even said that he had been bribed by Mexico with
immense sums of money to betray his country. It was Tony who wrote me
this, in answer to a question. But he knew no more than this gossip, not
even when he arrived in London the day before Diana's wedding.

"For all I can tell," he said, when he had congratulated me on my limp,
"March may have offered himself and his aeroplane to the Viceroy of
India or the Sultan of Turkey or even the Emperor of Japan. There's only
one thing certain about him: he'll have to be a soldier
somewhere--somehow!"

"Blessed is the bride the sun shines on," they say, but the sun did not
shine on Diana. The ninth of July dawned gray and blustering, with a
queer rasping chill in the air like an autumn day slipped back in the
calendar. I hated the thought of seeing Di married to Sidney Vandyke.