"He?" I murmured back.
"Lord Ballyconal. But dear Diana is wonderful, of course."
Her wondrousness was largely a tribute to Kitty, who had given the bride everything she had on, everything that was packed away in her trunks at home, or laid out ready to go away in.
It all passed off exactly like any other wedding on a grand scale, except that Tony, sitting by my side, drew a long breath when the bishop who was marrying Diana to Sidney Vandyke finished the conventional pause following "or else forever after hold his peace." I flashed another glance at Tony but he was looking more like an imperturbable Billiken than he had ever looked.
And so Di was married, and people whispered what a beautiful bride, and how good-looking the American bridegroom was, while she and Sidney were in the vestry signing their names in the book. Then, down the aisle they came, Di radiant, Major Vandyke flushed and brilliant eyed. "He looks as if he had just fought a successful engagement," I heard an American man in the pew behind say to his wife. Well, that was exactly what he had done. But whether according to the rules of war or not was another question. We let the crowd pour out of the church before us, and followed at leisure, I feeling more depressed than I should at a funeral. Automobiles and carriages were dashing up to the pavement to take people away, and dashing off again after an instant's pause, while throngs of the uninvited and curious pressed close on either side of the red carpet. Rain was falling, but the lookers-on appeared to care little. The people seemed more excited than usual at a wedding, we thought, especially after the passing of the bride; and Tony and I looked at each other questioningly with raised eyebrows as we caught a word here and there.
"Might 'ave been a tragedy!" "Pretty close call, that was." "If it hadn't been for that feller they'd both have been dead corpses now!" remarked the uninvited.
"What can have happened?" we asked each other, and I made Tony speak to the policeman who had shut us into our car.
"Bride's carriage, sir; but it was soon all right in the end," was the only answer we got, as the signal was given for our motor to move off and the next to come up.
"The bride's carriage!" Then the new automobile hadn't come, and there had been an accident at the church door.