We dashed home to get news of Diana, and it was a relief to find everything decorous and apparently serene at the house. We were informed by a band of footmen, hired with powder and pomatum inclusive, for the occasion, that the bride had arrived safely. There was no stare of consternation or half-hidden horror on any face. But in the flower-decked drawing-room, with its effective marble pillars (Di and Father had taken the house on the strength of that drawing-room, so well designed for a wedding reception), the bride and bridegroom had not yet stationed themselves to smile and be congratulated, although guests had begun to arrive. Father, however, was there, at his best and reassuring everybody. Diana had been a "little upset by the fright, don't you know, and Vandyke was looking after her"; but it was nothing—nothing at all. She would be down presently.

"What is it, Father? What did happen?" I found a chance to whisper; but to my surprise he gave me for answer only a frown which seemed inexplicably to say, "Whatever it is, you'd better not ask! Don't pretend innocence, it doesn't suit you."

"Do find out something from somebody," I said hastily to Tony, and ran upstairs in search of Kitty Main, who, having deserted us to return home with Father, was nevertheless not to be found in the drawing-room. She was sure to know everything, I thought, and delighted to talk. But the first person I met was Sidney Vandyke in the act of closing Diana's door and coming out into the hall. Seeing me, a set and gloomy expression, most unsuitable to a bridegroom, changed to a look of actual fury. If I had been a small tame dog which had unexpectedly sprung up to bite him, he could not have glared more venomously.

Since he had come to London we had met almost every day, and when necessary I had been as dully polite as a book on etiquette. But only when necessary. At other times I had effaced myself; now, though I was keen for news of Di, I didn't care to get it from him, especially after that look. Never since the episode of the photograph in camp at El Paso had I of my own free will begun a conversation with Major Vandyke, and it was now my intention to wait until he was out of the way before going to Kitty or Diana. But when I would quietly have slid past the bridegroom in the corridor, he stopped me.

"You've always been the enemy," he said in a tone of repressed rage, subdued to reach my ears only, "but I did think you fought fair. I didn't expect you to hit me in the back—and strike your sister, too, on her wedding day. You're a cruel and cowardly little enemy, after all. And let me tell you this: neither of us will forgive you as long as we live."

I stared at him in amazement. "I don't know what you mean!"

"I shouldn't lie on top of the rest, if I were you," he sneered. "I forbid you to go to Di. She's borne enough. A little more, and she'd not be able to face those people downstairs."

"I tell you again, and I don't lie, because Eagle March himself taught me to speak the truth," I said, "that I've no idea what you're driving at. I have done nothing, except live. I don't know what's happened. I want to know."

"You shan't have the satisfaction of hearing anything from me!" Sidney flung the words at my head. Then he turned on his heel, and opened Diana's door again without knocking. I think he would have shut it in my face; but Kitty Main was ready to come out, and must have had her hand on the knob when it was snatched from her fingers.

"Oh, Major!" she exclaimed. "I was hurrying to call you back. Di thinks she's strong enough to go down now."

The door remained open, and I saw Di sitting on a sofa just opposite, with an empty champagne glass in her hand. Her white face and white figure in her wedding dress stood out like a wonderfully painted portrait against the fashionable black chintz wall-covering of the bedroom. Seeing her husband, she stood up and came forward, setting the wineglass on the table as she passed. "I'm all right now," she said, and then caught sight of me.

"Oh, cruel!" she reproached me. "Was it he who asked you not to tell, or was it your own thought?"

"He?" I echoed. "You all talk in riddles. You accuse me of something, and won't explain what it is."

"You must know!" Di exclaimed. "But I can't talk about it now, or I shall break down again. Thanks for the champagne, Sid. You were right; it did me good. Now we'll go."

She brushed past me in the corridor, her head turned away; and as I stared stupidly after her and Major Vandyke, suddenly my eyes fell on a small but conspicuous spot of red that marred the lustre of Di's silver train. It looked like a drop of blood.

When the two had gone, I pounced upon Mrs. Main. "For pity's sake, explain the mystery!"

"Oh, it was dreadful for a few minutes," she said. "There was nearly the most awful accident. Of course you came out too late to see. But—you do know who was in the church?—at least, I suppose he must have been there."

I started as if she had boxed my ears, for without telling, I knew all she meant. I remembered the odd feeling I had had of some one trying to call me, as if in a dream; and how I had looked behind me in vain. Tony, too, had been very strange. He had begun to say something and had stopped in haste. He had promised to explain later, but coming home I had forgotten to ask him. There had been the excitement about the supposed accident to Diana, and my thoughts had clung to that.

Now I realized that there was only one person who might have been at St. George's with my secret connivance, whose presence there Sidney Vandyke would furiously resent: Eagle March.

Kitty was looking at me curiously, almost appealingly, and I was vexed with myself for blushing. "I do not know," I answered steadily. "I might guess—but almost surely I should guess wrong. Tell me who, in all that crowd, it was worth Sidney's while to make this fuss about."

"Well," said Kitty, who being far from brave is easily abashed, "I'm not sure he was inside the church, but anyhow he was outside, because I saw him the instant before he seized the horses' heads. And then——"

"Seized the horses' heads? But who—who?"

"Captain March. Of course it was he who saved Diana and Major Vandyke. At least I think he deserves so much credit, and Di would think it, too, if she were left to herself. But Major Vandyke says the whole thing was arranged; that it was Captain March who planned—to—to——"

"He's sure to say something horrible. But begin at the beginning!"

"I can't now, dear," said Kitty nervously. "Di and Sidney will be so cross if I stay up here talking to you. I really must go down; but you're sure to hear everything."

I didn't insist, for I could not keep her against her will; and besides, it would be better to have the story from some one who could tell things more clearly. Down I flew to find Tony, whom I could trust to have commandeered some news for me by this time. Already the drawing-room was crammed with perfumed people and too fragrant flowers, and a babel of chatter. I should have had to knock fat old ladies and thin old gentlemen about like ninepins to sort out from among bonneted and bald pates the inconspicuous brown head I sought, and my search was checked constantly by well-meaning creatures who pined to tell me how pretty the wedding had been, or how much I had grown since they saw me last. Now and then, however, I picked up a wisp of information.

"What a close shave there was of a tragedy! But all's well that ends well," said Lady O'Harrel, a distant cousin of ours who had ignored the connection until it advertised itself in Norfolk Street and Park Lane. "Who was the man who seized the horses' heads when they bolted? I didn't 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 when I asked why you kept turning your head, and you told me it was because you felt some one 'looking for you?'"

"Yes! And you said 'By Jove! I wonder if it's possible——' Then you shut up like an oyster."

"I thought it wouldn't do to go further, then, and excite you for nothing, maybe. I did promise to tell you afterward, but coming here we had the accident to talk about, and you forgot——"

"Never mind excuses. Tell me now. Had you seen him?"

"I wasn't quite sure—thought I might have made a mistake. Away back near the door as we came in I caught sight of a chap who reminded me of March. But I never saw him before in London togs, you know, and it was dark in the church, with all that rain coming down outside. I couldn't tell for certain, it seemed so dashed improbable that he should be there. Even if he was in London, he wouldn't have been likely to get a card——"

"A card, indeed! Do you think any one with eyes in his head would ask Eagle March to show a card?"

"Well, anyhow," Tony defended himself, "why should he want to poke his nose in there? I judged him by the way I should feel, supposing it was you being spliced to some other fellow. I'd sooner be at the North or South Pole than have to watch it done, unless I could bounce out with an impediment why you shouldn't lawfully be joined together."

"I can think of reasons why a man might—might steel himself to see a woman he'd loved married to another man," I said; though in truth, I couldn't see distinctly, and I wondered if the day would come when the mystery of Eagle's presence at Diana's wedding would clear itself up. There was just one thing I could count on, though! It would never be from my trying to find out, but only when, and if, Eagle wished me to know. Meanwhile, I trusted him as always, and hardly needed to be told that the man in the back seat at St. George's hadn't flaunted himself in a conspicuous position.

"He was wedged in between two women's hats," Tony went on. "I'd never have spotted him, if I hadn't been rubber-necking at the crowd, sort of counting scalps. That's not done by brides and grooms in our class of life, so March might have felt as safe as a hermit crab, as far as giving the willies to Lady Di or Vandyke was concerned. But just when I was rubbering, he happened to shove his head forward between hats to squint at you."

"Oh, Tony!" I couldn't help breaking in. "He was looking at me?"

"That's the way it struck me. But the ladies with the hats were after the same thing, so they closed their ranks in front of March's nose, and swamped him. That's why I didn't get the chance to make sure whether it was he or his double. I rubbered some more, to see, but there was only a massed formation of hats where the face had been. There's nothing like hatpins to drive a man to the wall."

I shivered a little with the same electric thrill which had passed through me in church. What a soulless thing I had been not to know, despite a barrier of a hundred hats, by instinct whose eyes had called mine. But Tony was going mildly on.

"That's all, about the church," he said. "March must have been one of the first to get out, or he wouldn't have been on the stage in time for the next act. Sounds like a kind of melodrama now, doesn't it? Act one, scene one, inside St. George's, Hanover Square; the wedding. Scene two, outside the church door. Only, in a melodrama, the bridegroom would be the hero, and the other fellow the villain. There's no villain in this play."

"Oh, isn't there?" I sneered. "We won't argue the question, though. I suppose the new motor car didn't come after all, as I hear things about runaway horses."

"Then you have heard already? What's the good of my repeating——"

"No—no! I've heard scarcely anything. I depended on you. I was sure you wouldn't fail me."

That encouraged Tony, and soon I knew what he knew. He had been pumping Captain Beatty, and had learned from him how, before leaving the Savoy for St. George's, Sidney had received a wire from his chauffeur. It said that the Grayles-Grice had safely arrived by a later train than promised, but that something was wrong with the motor. Better not depend on the car for church, though it would be pretty sure to be all right to go away in after the reception. This was a blow to Sidney, because he had grown quite superstitious on the subject of reaching the house from St. George's. He had told Captain Beatty about repeated dreams of a bomb startling a pair of horses. And a Bond Street clairvoyant had seen in her crystal a picture of him and a woman in white driving away from a church in a black-draped hearse. Captain Beatty had mentioned casually to Tony that Vandyke used to have as good nerves as the next man, but that he'd got "jumpy" lately, and Beatty wondered whether it was like that with all fellows who were going to be married.

The only thing to do had been to order a motor or carriage to come to St. George's for the bride and bridegroom. Di, appealed to by telephone, preferred a carriage. A smart-looking one had been sent accordingly, but the horses were fresh and had begun to dance impatiently even before Diana and Sidney came out of the church. The thin little coachman had difficulty in holding them in when it thundered. By the time Di and her husband appeared, the pair were prancing on their hind legs, and the crowd on the pavement waiting for the bridal couple were pushing nervously back, out of the way of threatening hoofs. Di had hesitated for an instant, but the coachman had assured Major Vandyke that the horses were only "playing a bit," and were as gentle as lambs. They'd come down to business the minute they were allowed to start. So Sidney had put Diana into the carriage and was in the act of getting in himself, when a man on a motor cycle suddenly tore round the corner into Hanover Square with the noise of ten thousand demons. That was the "limit" for the horses, said Tony. They bolted, with Di shrieking and trying to pull her husband into the brougham, Sidney clinging ignominiously to the door, and to a strap inside.

The policeman and another man or two ran forward, but the screaming of Diana and dozens of women on the pavement frightened the creatures more and more. The coachman lost control; the policeman was kicked, and stumbled back; the others couldn't get to the horses, which were bolting across the street; and in another minute the bridegroom would certainly have been flung down, if a man just out of church hadn't made a dash to the rescue. The next thing any one knew, he was hanging on to the animals' heads like grim death, and bringing them down from their hind feet on to all fours again. He was dragged a few yards before a couple of policemen could get to his side; but meanwhile, as he clung to the horses, like a brake on their speed, the brougham steadied itself, Sidney contrived to crawl inside and bang the door shut, for his own protection and Di's. It all happened in a minute; and as the hatless man held on to the horses' heads, Captain Beatty in great astonishment recognized him as Captain March. It was Eagle who stopped the horses; but as the two policemen sprang to his aid, and staggering back he let go his hold, he must have been kicked by one of the beasts. What Captain Beatty did see was Eagle's forehead streaming with blood, and when the rescuer had hurried away, insisting that the wound was of no importance, the bride was helped out of the carriage by the bridegroom and into a closed motor car which some one hastily offered. In the street where it had all happened was a stain of blood, Captain March's no doubt; but in the excitement of changing the bride from one vehicle to the other he had time to vanish as completely as if he'd wrapped himself in an invisible cloak.

"Just as well, too, considering who he was, and who he's saved," Tony finished ungrammatically. "It would have been mighty awkward for all parties if he'd fallen down in a faint, and Lord Ballyconal out of gratitude had had to put him up here, where the wedding party's going on. Or even if he'd been all right, but coralled by the crowd, the bride would have been called upon to address him as 'my preserver'—what? Can't you see Vandyke obliged to shower blessings on March for saving both their lives?"

"And yet, how awful that he should go without a word of thanks—go wounded and bleeding!" The thought made me choke.

"I guess March is a bit like a sick cat that way," said Tony dryly. "He'd rather crawl off and get well alone than be bothered by sympathy, even yours, my child. That's like him. And like him to save the very man who's spoilt his life. But blest if I can see that being there in church was like him, no matter what you say! Anyhow, it was a blamed good thing for every one concerned that he just dropped from heaven like manna in the nick of time, and then was absorbed back into clouds again, blood and all."

"Diana's dress must have been baptized in that blood," I muttered, for my own benefit, but Tony caught me up. "Gee whiz! did she get her gown spattered with it?"

"A drop or two on her silver train. Poetic justice! The blood had been spilt for her."

"Dashed bad luck to get it on her wedding dress, though, I've heard superstitious folks say—but what rotten nonsense to talk like this to you! Of course, there's nothing in it."

"I'm not sure how Di would feel if she knew. But I feel as if a drop of Eagle March's blood would be like the blood of the prince in a fairy story I used to love. Just the faintest smear of it brought fortune for the heroine and all her family," I said. "Di doesn't know. I didn't tell what I saw. And would you believe this, Tony? My noble brother-in-law pretends to believe that Eagle got up the whole scene, like a plot in that melodrama you were talking about. I suppose he'd like Di to think that Eagle bribed the livery people to send nervous horses and a weak coachman, and that he hired a motor cyclist to swing round the corner on a cue at the right instant, in order that he himself might play the gallant hero. Rather elaborate! But that shows how a man judges another by what he would do in his place! Isn't it a proof that the El Paso affair was a plot—a plot Sidney accuses Eagle of revenging in this wild way?"

"That's quite a neat suggestion," said Tony, smiling an "indulge-the-poor-child" smile which made me want to box his ears—though not hard. "I don't think you need be afraid, though," he hurried on, to calm me. "Vandyke won't openly accuse March of anything more, I guess, unless in the bosom of his family where it won't do much harm. If he dealt out any 'plot' talk of that sort, he'd make himself a laughing-stock, and he wouldn't stand for that. He'll just try to forget the whole business, and help other folks to forget—cut it out."

"It will be better for him!" I said, as fiercely as a small dog growling in the kennel of a big one. "But Di and Sidney, too, both accuse me of being in the 'plot.' They say I knew Eagle was in England, and secretly invited him to the wedding. I haven't even heard from him since we came back from America."

"Haven't you?" Tony's face brightened. "Well, I shall never cease wondering what brought March to the church, till I know—which may be never. Unless you tell me when you hear."

"If I hear!"

"I guess you're sure to sooner or later. He must know now that he was recognized. No use hiding his head in the sand! He'll want to explain why he—er—well, sort of intruded."

"No, he wouldn't need to explain," I reiterated. "What's the use of friendship, if it doesn't understand and take things for granted? And—if Eagle never writes, I shall know he doesn't want me to seek him. So I won't do that, even though he has been hurt for us, and maybe is suffering."

"You're a soldier," Tony complimented me. "March would be just the man to appreciate that if he could hear you now."

"I believe he would understand me as I understand him," I said. "Still it is hard not to know if he's badly hurt."

"By the way he shot through the crowd like a streak of greased lightning, I should say it wasn't fatal," Tony cheered me. "But if you'd like to have me do a bit of secret service work and 'phone to a few hotels or hospitals——"

I shook my head decidedly. "I know the hotel where he goes," I said. "I shan't send. I think if he were very badly wounded, he would let me know. He'd trust me to stand between him and—the others. Now—let's go and see Di cut her wedding cake. You can have a piece to dream on if you like."

"No good!" said Tony. "I always dream of you anyhow, when I dream at all—except when I eat welsh rabbit: then I dream of the devil." But he went with me like a lamb, and we spoke no more of Captain March.