“Gita!” Elsie, who was sitting back on her heels, suddenly sprang to her feet and clapped her hands. “It’s my turn to have an inspiration. Why don’t you marry Eustace on Christmas Eve—spring a surprise at the end of the party?” Polly, who after months of intimacy with Gita sometimes felt as young as her years, fairly danced. “Gorgeous! It will be the night of our lives. I can see you stepping down those stairs with a powdered footman on either side——” “Haven’t any footmen——” “We’ll hire them—no, make two of the men dress up.” “I can’t have a wedding like that without your mother and Mr. Donald.” Gita, surrounded by these ancestral feminine relics, was feeling every inch a Carteret. “They’ll be told to arrive with Dr. Lancaster on the stroke of midnight—no, ten minutes before. Leave it to me.” “But suppose Eustace—he’s the sort that hates to be rushed—I should think.” “He hasn’t a thing to do but get the license and wedding-ring. Of course he won’t mind.” Gita turned to Elsie, her brows drawn together. “What do you think? You ought to know him better than any of us.” “I agree with Polly. Why shouldn’t he be enchanted?” Her eyes were shining, her cheeks burning. “Why are you so anxious to marry me off in a hurry?” asked Gita suspiciously. “Anxious? I’m no more anxious than Polly. I want to look on at a wonderful picture, that’s all. I intend to stand on that chair by the fireplace when you come down the stair.” “But if I’m married like that I’ll have to have bridesmaids, and you’ll both come down behind me.” “Bridesmaids——” “Not much,” cried Polly. “We’d spoil the picture. We’ll be bridesmaids all right, but we’ll wait at the foot of the stairs. So will Eustace. Might as well turn all the old regulations upside down while we’re about it.” Gita jerked up her shoulders. “Well. Have it your own way. But—well—I’m not in such a hurry to marry.” Her hesitation was unaccountable to herself. What difference did a week make? She glanced at the dress on her arms. It had covered the slim body of a girl glowing with love for the man she was about to marry. Her own wedding would be a caricature of that wedding-day half a century ago. And again something stirred along her nerves, ghostly whisperings, no doubt, of the women who had laughed and loved and danced and coquetted in these gowns which should have been dust with themselves. . . . There was something both ironic and sinister in the living persistence of textile and fashion—over God’s own image! . . . Those Colonial women had loved and married as a matter of course, wasted their time on no problems beyond babies and death and a new gown for the governor’s ball. Life had been very simple in those old days in the Colonies.