The two weeks before the wedding were the happiest of her life.  All day long, each day, vans were thundering up to the rear doors of Windrift, each van loaded to bursting with new and magnificent, if not beautiful costliness.  The house was full of the employees of florists, dressmakers, decorators, each one striving to outdo the other in servility.  Theresa was like an autocratic sovereign, queening it over these menials and fancying herself adored.  They showed so plainly that they were awed by her and were in ecstasies of admiration over her taste.  And, as the grounds and the house were transformed, Theresa’s exaltation grew until she went about fairly dizzy with delight in herself.

The bridesmaids and ushers came.  They were wealth-worshipers all, and their homage lifted Theresa still higher.  They marched and swept about in her train, lording it over the menials and feeling that they were not a whit behind the grand ladies and gentlemen of the French courts of the eighteenth century.  They had read the memoirs of that idyllic period diligently, had read with minds only for the flimsy glitter which hid the vulgarity and silliness and shame as a gorgeous robe hastily donned by a dirty chambermaid might conceal from a casual glance the sardonic and repulsive contrast.  The wedding day approached all too swiftly for Theresa and her court.  True, that would be the magnificent climax; but they knew it would also dissipate the spell—­after the wedding, life in twentieth century America again.

“If only it don’t rain!” said Harry Legendre.

“It won’t,” replied Theresa with conviction—­and her look of command toward the heavens made the courtiers exchange winks and smiles behind her back.  They were courtiers to wealth, not to Theresa, just as their European prototypes are awed before a “king’s most excellent Majesty,” not before his swollen body and shrunken brain.

And it did not rain.  Ross arrived in the red sunset of the wedding eve, Tom Glenning, his best man, coming with him.  They were put, with the ushers, in rooms at the pavilion where were the squash courts and winter tennis courts and the swimming baths.  Theresa and Ross stood on the front porch alone in the moonlight, looking out over the enchantment-like scene into which the florists and decorators had transformed the terraces and gardens.  She was a little alarmed by his white face and sunken eyes; but she accepted his reassurances without question—­she would have disbelieved anything which did not fit in with her plans.  And now, as they gazed out upon that beauty under the soft shimmer of the moonlight, her heart suddenly expanded in tenderness.  “I am so happy,” she murmured, slipping an arm through his.

Her act called for a return pressure.  He gave it, much as a woman’s salutation would have made him unconsciously move to lift his hat.

“While Adele was dressing me for dinner—­” she began.