"Knocks you off your feet, eh? No more surprised than I am, Do!" she cried in her exclamatory style. "But, lord! what are you going to do when a human detective agency like Tony camps on your trail and shoos all eligibles away!"
"Tony Rex!" said Dodo, with a gasp of astonishment. She was studying the brilliant beauty of the girl, wondering to herself if she would ever know what chances she had missed.
"Tony, God bless him!"
"Why?"
"Can't help myself! He's my kind, and I can't fool him!" cried Ida. Then she continued enthusiastically: "I say, Dodo! I'm tired of all that other crowd—the stuffed shirt brigade, you know. What's the use? I don't belong! Lord! I'd rather link my arm in Tony's and trolley it to a hot dog and a glass of beer, where you can talk English, than to stiffen up and act refined with a Sassoon or a Charley-boy, feeding me broiled lobster in a gilded caff! It's not in me. I don't belong—thank God!"
"Well, I never!" said Doré clutching a stocking.
"Now, just a word or two strictly on the Q. T.," resumed Ida anxiously. "Tony is a most hot-headed native; I think it just as well to cut out all references to a few episodes in the past. Do you get it?"
"I do!"
"He tells me I'm a blue-eyed baby somersaulting through a wicked world, entirely too innocent and fragile to understand—ahem! If that's what Tony wants, why,—God bless him!—I wouldn't have him disturbed for the world! Besides—lord! Dodo! I've been an awful fool; such risks—whew! I wish one particular party—well, ahem! It's to-night, no fuss or feathers. That's Tony's way, quick, on the trigger. Gets me. He's got a best man: that'll make a party of four. Little Church Around the Corner, a good blow-out after—Mrs. T. Rex! Why don't you do the same, Do? Lord! I feel so happy I could jump fifty feet in the air and bite the feathers out of the lulubird!"
The marriage was very quiet. The sudden solemnity of Ida at the last, the proud carriage of Tony Rex, the new sidelong clinging of the young wife to her husband, half protection, half proprietorship, the glow in her eyes, the gay dinner and the trip to the station to wave them Godspeed on their mysterious journey into the new world—all this impressed Dodo strongly. At first it seemed a sort of treason: she resented Ida's succumbing to the impertinent mastery of Tony Rex—Rex, who always, with a shudder recalled to her that other figure who had once, in the forgotten past, domineered likewise over her. But the marriage service in the little chapel, the quiet of the party of four, the feeling of solemnity, the way Ida had turned for her husband's kiss, oblivious of them, had affected her curiously. She scarcely noticed the best man at her side. She was thinking of Lindaberry—how happy he would be if she should turn to him, if she could feel as Ida did! Lindaberry was in her thoughts all the evening, and again in her dreams that night. The next day she refused to see Massingale at all.