"If I had your good looks, Miss Cameron," said Mercedes, "added to my natural ability, I'd make Julia Marlowe look like an old-fashioned one-ring circus. Send Mr. Bacon to me, Mr. Barnes. I want to congratulate him."
"He gave a fine performance," said Barnes promptly.
"I don't want to congratulate him on his acting," said she, smiling through her tears. "He's going to be married to-morrow. And I am going to have Miss Cameron for my bridesmaid," she added, throwing an arm about the astonished Countess. "Mr. Bacon will want Dilly for his best man, but he ought to think more of the general effect than that. Dilly only comes to his shoulder." She measured the stalwart figure of Thomas Barnes with an appraising eye. "What do you say, Mr. Barnes?"
"I'll do it with the greatest pleasure," he declared.
The next afternoon in the town of Bittler the Countess Mara-Dafanda, daughter of royalty, and Thomas Kingsbury Barnes "stood up" with the happy couple during a lull in the hastily called rehearsal on the stage of Fisher's Imperial Theatre, and Lyndon Rushcroft gave the bride away. There was $107 in the house that night, but no one was down-hearted.
"You could do worse, dear heart, than to marry one of us care-free Americans," whispered Barnes to the girl who clung to his arm so tightly as they entered the wings in the wake of the bride and groom.
And she said something in reply that brought a flush of mortification to his cheek.
"Oh, it would be wonderful to marry a man who will never have to go to war. A brave man who will not have to be a soldier."
The unintentional reflection on the fighting integrity of his country struck a raw spot in Barnes's pride. He knew what all Europe was saying about the pussy-willow attitude of the United States, and he squirmed inwardly despite the tribute she tendered him as an individual. He was not a "peace at any price" citizen.
He gave the wedding breakfast at one o'clock that night.