So four years went by, and instead of wearying them, each day drew them nearer.
’Twas in France the news reached them that changed their life once more. ’Twas brought by a mounted messenger riding hard from the English Ambassador in Paris and reached the Duke late at night while Diana slept upstairs, the child beside her.
Little knowing its content, he opened and read.
“Her Grace the Duchess of Bolton died Wednesday was a week. Inform his Grace that he may return as is necessary.”
He read again and, folding it, slipped it into his breast, and went up the stair to the great room curtained with velvet and a dim light burning in a silver lamp beside the bed. She lay there in the sweetest sleep, the image of youth and innocence, one soft hand flung out over her child that slept in a bed beside her, the other across her breast. Some happy thought passed through her dreaming mind as he stood looking down, for a smile flitted across her lips and vanished leaving its pleasure behind it. Indeed for all her twenty-two years she seemed but a child herself, save for the attitude maternal of the guarding hand. The two pulled at his heart-strings now he was at the moment of decision whether to cut the bond, to leave things as they were, or to make them his own irrevocably. Stooping, he kissed her on the cheek as light as her own smile. Drowsily she woke, as held in the arms of content,—he could see the glimmer of her waking eyes through the dark lashes. Almost before they opened her arm was about his neck—as he knelt beside her.
“What does my darling standing there alone? I’m too sleepy to talk. Come and rest. It grows late.”
“Wake, Di,” says he, “There’s a journey before you. We leave in an hour for Paris.”
She turned on her elbow trying to read his face—
“Beloved, why? What is it? Good or bad?”
“As you shall take it. For me wholly good. We go to the Embassy. By this time tomorrow you will be my wife.”