Millie, who was to watch the procession with Henry, was having breakfast with Victoria in her bedroom. Last night Victoria had given a dinner-party to celebrate her engagement, and she had insisted that Millie should sleep there—"the party would be late, a little dancing afterwards, and no one is so important for the success of the whole affair as you are, my Millie."
Victoria, sitting up in her four-poster in a lace cap and purple kimono, was very fine indeed. She felt fine; she held an imaginary reception, feeling, she told Millie, exactly like Teresia Tallien, whose life she had just been reading, so she said to Millie.
"Not at all the person to feel like," said Millie, "just before you're married."
"If you're virtuous," said Victoria, "and are never likely to be anything else to the end of your days it is rather a luxury to imagine yourself grand, beautiful and wicked."
"You have got on rather badly with Tallien," said Millie, "and you wouldn't have liked Barras any better."
"Well, I needn't worry about it," said Victoria, "because I've got Mereward, who is quite another sort of man." She drank her tea, and then reflectively added: "Do you realize, Millie, darling, that you've stuck to me a whole eight months, and that we're more 'stuck' so to speak than we were at the beginning?"
"Is that very marvellous?" asked Millie.
"Marvellous! Why, of course it is! You don't realize how many I had before you came. The longest any one stayed was a fortnight."
"I've very nearly departed on one or two occasions," said Millie.
"Yes, I know you have." Victoria settled herself luxuriously. "Just give me that paper, darling, before you go and some of the letters. Pick out the nicest ones. You've seen me dear, at a most turbulent point of my existence, but I'm safe in harbour now, and even if it seems a little dull I daresay I shall be able to scrape up a quarrel or two with Mereward before long." Millie gave her the papers; she caught her hand. "You've been happier these last few weeks, dear, haven't you? I'd hate to think that you're still worrying. . . . That—that man. . . ." She paused.