“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.”

“But Leila said——­”

Her head went up.  It was a characteristic gesture.  “It doesn’t make any difference what any one says.  I’m not going to Nice.”

Once more in the Tower Rooms, the two sisters were together for the last time.  Leila was sent down on a hastily contrived errand.  Aunt Frances, arriving, was urged to go back and look after the guests.  Only Aunt Isabelle was allowed to remain.  She could be of use, and the things which were to be said she could not hear.

“Dearest,” Constance’s voice had a break in it, “dearest, I feel so selfish—­leaving you——­”

Mary was kneeling on the floor, unfastening hooks.  “Don’t worry, Con.  I’ll get along.”

“But you’ll have to bear—­things—­all alone.  It isn’t as if any one knew, and you could talk it out.”

“I’d rather die than speak of it,” fiercely, “and I sha’n’t write anything to you about it, for Gordon will read your letters.”

“Oh, Mary, he won’t.”

“Oh, yes, he will, and you’ll want him to—­you’ll want to turn your heart inside out for him to read, to say nothing of your letters.”

She stood up and put both of her hands on her sister’s shoulders.  “But you mustn’t tell him, Con.  No matter how much you want to, it’s my secret and Barry’s—­promise me, Con——­”

“But, Mary, a wife can’t.”

“Yes, she can have secrets from her husband.  And this belongs to us, not to him.  You’ve married him, Con, but we haven’t.”

Aunt Isabelle, gentle Aunt Isabelle, shut off from the world of sound, could not hear Con’s little cry of protest, but she looked up just in time to see the shimmering dress drop to the floor, and to see the bride, sheathed like a lily in whiteness, bury her head on Mary’s shoulder.