"There ain't no luck in a wedding without rice, Miss Mary. These paper rose-leaf things that you've got in the bags are mighty pretty, but how are you going to know that they bring good luck?"
"Aunt Frances thought they would be charming and foreign, Susan, and they look very real, floating off in the air. You must stand there on the upper porch, and give the little bags to the guests."
Susan ascended the terrace steps complainingly. "You go right in out of the night, Miss Mary," she called back, "an' you with nothin' on your bare neck!"
Mary, turning, came face to face with Gordon's best man, Porter Bigelow.
"Mary," he said, impetuously, "I've been looking for you everywhere. I couldn't keep my eyes off you during the service—you were—heavenly."
"I'm not a bit angelic, Porter," she told him, "and I'm simply freezing out here. I had to show Susan about the confetti."
He drew her in and shut the door. "They sent me to hunt for you," he said. "Constance wants you. She's going up-stairs to change. But I heard just now that you are going to Nice. Leila told me. Mary—you can't go—not so far away—from me."
His hand was on her arm.
She shook it off with a little laugh.
"You haven't a thing to do with it, Porter. And I'm not going—to Nice."