see him myself, but I heard some one say he looked like a gentleman."

I answered as if I had the whole affair at my fingers' ends: "It was
Captain March of the American army, the flying man who used to be so
popular here last summer."

"Dear me!" breathed Lady O'Harrel, who had two sons of her own in the
British army. "_Fancy!_ Why, I heard Gerald speaking of him only the
other day. He heard that Captain March had been cashiered for something
or other so _dreadful_ it couldn't be spoken of. The story's going the
rounds of London now. I'm not sure Gerald didn't get it from your
brother-in-law the night he asked Major Vandyke to dine at the Rag. How
strange Captain March should have been the one to save them!"

"He was not cashiered," I passionately protested. "He did nothing
dreadful. It was----" I stopped myself on the verge of saying that it
was Sidney Vandyke himself who deserved to bear the shame he would
thrust on another. But there are some things you cannot do! One of these
is to inform a guest at your sister's wedding that the bridegroom is a
villain. I had to choke back my rage against Sidney at its hottest, like
Vesuvius swallowing its own lava, and resolve to fight the battle of
Eagle March only on the lines of _noblesse oblige_--the lines on which
he would choose to fight, no matter what the provocative.

At last I unearthed Tony, talking to the prettiest bridesmaid. But
because she was the prettiest, and other men were glad to snap her up, I
disentangled Tony with ease. "I've been dying for you!" I said.

"I don't flatter myself too much on that," he replied. "It's my story
you want. Well, I've been busy putting things together, and I guess it's
only the two ends of the jig-saw that are missing now. I warn you,
Peggy, I don't know how Eagle March got into church, or where from, or
what became of him at the end."

"Perhaps I shall hear from him," I said; yet I spoke mechanically and
with little hope. I felt that the time Eagle had fixed for our meeting
was not yet.

"Perhaps you will," echoed Tony. "He may want to explain, when he knows
_you_ know he was there, why he turned up at Lady Di's wedding: that it
wasn't just vulgar curiosity, or the wish to give her a start that made
him do it."

"He wouldn't need to explain to you, or me, or any one who knew him," I
answered. "That goes without saying. Whatever his reason was, it was
good. But are you sure he was in the church?"

"Well, you remember w