ely written and crossed page of thin foreign paper.

"Stefan!" Milly choked on the name. "Oh, it's awful! His father has
consented to his marrying me all right, but _of course_ he'll go
and--and be _killed_ now, and I shall never see him again! I'm the
unluckiest girl that ever lived. And just when I thought everything was
going to be so splendid."

I heard her wailing as I finished my letter, which was from Di: the
first she had written me. It had gone to Brussels and been forwarded
from there to Liege. "Sidney and I are rushing back to London as fast as
the car will take us," she wrote. "This war news is terrible. Any minute
we may hear that England's mixed up in the business. There's no more fun
motoring about the country in this suspense; and if there's war, all the
house parties we were asked to in Scotland are sure to be given up. We
want to be where we can have news every minute, and will hurry up the
decorators so we can get into our house, even if things are at sixes and
sevens there. From what I hear, everybody will be congregating in London
to be in the heart of things. It makes me sick to think of all my
_lovely_ clothes! If there's war, nobody will be wearing _anything_. All
the nicest men will be away at the front. Isn't it _sickening_? Luckily,
Sidney won't have to fight, as America's not involved. But I don't want
to go over there and have people at home calling me a _coward_, to sneak
away from under the Zeppelins and things the Germans will be sending
over. I want to do what everybody else does, though Heaven alone knows
yet what that will be. I expect Bally and Kitty will come back from
Harrogate, where poor dear Bally is celebrating his honeymoon by taking
a strict cure, and I hear Kitty is doing mud baths to reduce her flesh.
They wire that there isn't one waiter out of sixty left in their
hotel--all were _Germans_; so you see what that means. And Kitty's maid
had hysterics this morning because war's to be declared on her country,
and because the hotel chambermaids are all turned into waitresses, and
she had to make Bally's and Kitty's beds. One realizes that war will be
horrible for _all classes_. Your life won't be safe on the Continent,
you know, and you'd better persuade Mrs. D. to bring you back
immediately. Though you've been so horrid to Sidney, he'll overlook it
in this crisis, for my sake, when even Ulsterites and Nationalists are
forgiving each other. Father and Kitty will have to stay wit