"Yes. He'll have to be here. We can't get along without the bridegroom. It wouldn't be a legal marriage, would it?"
Diane looked at her, for the moment dumb. "You little wretch!" she got out at last. "So it's Gordon, is it? Are you quite sure this time? Not likely to change your mind before Thursday?"
"I suppose, to an outsider, I do seem fickle," Miss O'Neill admitted smilingly. "But Gordon and I both understand that."
"And Colby Macdonald--does he understand it too?"
"Oh, yes." Her smile grew broader. "He told me that he didn't think I would quite suit him, after all. Not enough experience for the place."
Diane flashed a suspicious look of inquiry. "Of course that's nonsense. What did he tell you?"
"Something like that. He will marry Mrs. Mallory, I think, though he doesn't know it yet."
"You mean she will get him on the rebound," said Diane bluntly.
"That isn't a nice way to put it. He has always liked her very much. He is fond of her for what she is. What attracted him in me were the things his imagination gave to me."
"And Gordon likes you, I suppose, for what you are?"
Sheba did not resent the little note of friendly sarcasm. "I suppose he has his fancies about me, too, but by the time he finds out what I am he'll have to put up with me."
The arrival of Elliot interrupted confidences. He had come, he said, to receive congratulations.
"What in the world have you been doing with your face?" demanded Diane. As an afterthought she added: "Mr. Macdonald is all cut up too."
"We've been taking massage treatment." Gordon passed to a subject of more immediate interest. "Do I get my congratulations, Di?"
She kissed him, too, for old sake's sake. "I do believe you'll suit Sheba better than Colby Macdonald would. He's a great man and you are not. But it isn't everybody that is fit to be the wife of a great man."
"That's a double, left-handed compliment," laughed Gordon. "But you can't say anything that will hurt my feelings to-day, Di. Isn't that your baby I heap crying? What a heartless mother you are!"
Diane gave him the few minutes alone with Sheba that his gay smile had asked for. "Get out with you," she said, laughing. "Go to the top of the hill and look at the lovers' moon I've ordered there expressly for you; and while you are there forget that there are going to be crying babies and nursemaids with evenings out in that golden future of yours."