Only a few persons knew that to arrange a meeting between Sidney Vandyke, Diana, Milly, and Captain Eagleston March, was about as tactful as to invite the King of Belgium to dine with the German Kaiser. Only a few persons knew, and those most concerned were the very ones who would do least to shield Eagle's feelings. The princess began gayly to explain that here was her great "surprise" at last: the two heroes of whose classic escape the whole world had heard. The "Elusive Mars," as he had been called, was in reality Captain March, who had refused to make use any longer of his _nom de guerre_. But in the midst of explanations, as she would gently have led Eagle toward Diana (oh, horror! she had evidently planned to send these two in to dinner together!), suddenly she realized that some freezing spell had turned her principal guests to figures of ice. Eagle, struck with deadly pallor under the brown mask sun and wind had given him, stiffened involuntarily and held back. Sidney had gone crimson, and then yellow-white; Diana--with a shocked face drained of colour--looked ready to faint; while Milly, in all her new pride of importance, flung up her head and stared insultingly. This transformation had taken place with the announcement of the officers' names; and it took Prince and Princess Sanzanow no longer than is needed in the counting one--two--three to notice it. Living all their lives in an atmosphere of diplomacy as they did, even their great tact and presence of mind failed for a few dismal seconds to cope with the emergency, it being so utterly unforeseen, and such a blow to them that their cherished "surprise" should be not only a dead failure but a brutal catastrophe. They must have realized in a flash that these people whom they had brought together were bitter enemies. They must, in a rush of emotion, have blamed themselves and each other for not finding out in time what perhaps they might have suspected or known without telling had they not been foreigners and comparative strangers in London society. As a matter of fact, they could not have known unless they had catechized Americans, which it would never have occurred to them to do; but no doubt the thought came to their minds, and they must have cursed their "inspiration" for that "pleasant surprise."