I saw Princess Sanzanow's eyes appeal in despair to her husband. But the situation was too complicated even for him to solve in a second, for the worst was yet to come. Thinking to compliment Di, and honour the man who had brought their nephew out of captivity, they had arranged that Captain March should take Lady Diana Vandyke in to dinner. The expression on her face and the stiffening of his muscles had shown this plan to be impossible, to say nothing of Major Vandyke's mad-bull glare. Now, at an instant's warning, there would have to be a general post, and changing of partners; and the most desperate difficulty of all must have lain in the princess's complete ignorance of the facts. She stood there among the company she had invited to meet each other as if blindfolded, not knowing which ones, or how many, were affected by the vendetta.
I saw and divined this between two heartbeats, for I was one of those who knew the undercurrents hidden from strangers; and in such moments one thinks quickly. Of all the guests, I was the least important, and the youngest except the Sanzanow boy; yet I felt that I was the only person present who could or would act in time. I made up my mind to risk seeming rude or shockingly bold. There was just one thing I could think of to do, and I did it.
Into the midst of that brief, freezing pause, I plunged. Almost running forward, I held out both hands to Eagle. "Oh, dear Princess!" I gasped. "We are the best and oldest friends, Captain March and I. We've known each other since—since I was a child; and we met in Belgium when he was 'Monsieur Mars.'"
Eagle grasped my hands so tightly that I should have had to cry out if I had worn rings, and Princess Sanzanow gave me such a look of touching gratitude that I was sure I had been lucky enough to do the right thing. "Oh, I am so glad!" she breathed. "Then, if you are great friends, you will want to go in to dinner together, and I must let you do so."
She had the air of having just been saved from drowning; and I was the straw which had thrust itself out in the nick of time for her to catch. Having accomplished my mission as a straw, I gave my attention wholly to Eagle, but though I tried not to notice, I was dimly conscious, all the same, of what was going on around me. I saw Major Skobeleff, the young Russian officer whose escape Eagle had aided—Prince Sanzanow's nephew—talking to Milly; and noticed that Stefan Stefanovitch had been given to Di as a substitute for Captain March. Somehow or other the princess juggled her guests about so that three minutes after the crash, when dinner was announced, all could "set to partners" without confusion. There was a French duchess—a refugee from Paris—present, whom the prince had to take in, and the princess had the duke. That arrangement couldn't be upset; and the only quite ridiculous effect of the whirlwind was to give young Prince Paul to a widow old enough to be his grandmother.
I had rushed into talk with Eagle before we stopped shaking hands; but he had not been able to answer the call of conventionality so soon; and it was not till after we were seated at table that he could control himself to speak. On his other side was Prince Paul's elderly dinner companion. On my other side was the new military attaché who had taken the count's place in the Embassy, a man past the soldiering age; and as he had Madame Pavlova to talk to, for him I did not exist. Eagle and I could speak to each other as if we were alone together in a forest haunted with far-off voices.
"What a fool I was to come here!" he said. "I ought to have known."
"Don't be sorry," I whispered. "Think how glad I am to see you. And there's no reason—no reason in the world—why you should wish to keep out of their way. You have nothing to be ashamed of—but very proud."
"I am glad to see you again," he answered. "Don't imagine I'm not! But I meant to see you, anyhow. I've known for weeks where you were. I made that kind old parson who piloted you home promise to wire to an address I gave, when you got safely back to England. And afterward he wrote to tell me what fine work you were doing. This is the first time I've been out anywhere except for an invalid crawl or two. It's only three days since we left the nursing home in Fitzroy Square, where Prince and Princess Sanzanow visited us several times. Skobeleff is their nephew, you know. They asked us both to stay with them, and Skobeleff is being moved here by his servant to-night; but I made an excuse not to come—said it would hurt the feelings of an old friend who had offered to lend me his chambers in Whitehall Court to finish getting well in. The Sanzanows wouldn't take a refusal for dinner this evening, though. It made no difference my telling them who I really am, March instead of Mars. I thought they were sure to know something of my story. They said, when I tried to cry off, that it was going to be a small dinner—just a few friends who would like to meet Skobeleff and me, so I let myself be persuaded. This is the result!"
As we spoke together, the conversation around us murmured vaguely in my ears. I heard it without listening, as one can hear an undertone of murmuring sea beneath all other sounds. People were talking of the one inevitable subject, the war, with variations; the New Patriotism which has made the Tory Lion and the Liberal Lamb lie down together in peace, side by side, paying each other compliments; the good-girl tactics of the suffragettes; the surprising slump in murders and every sort of crime; possible raids of Zeppelins; and the amusingly persistent legend of Russians in France; the same things which were being discussed at that very moment, no doubt, in every household high and low, from one end of Great Britain to the other, but always new and ever interesting, yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow. I glanced at Di and Major Vandyke and Milly, to see how they were bearing themselves, and I was not pleased with what I saw.