"Wedding eve be--'jizzled!'" inelegantly remarked the bride-elect. "You sound quite early Edwardian! If you don't tell me, I shall think the thing worse than it is." "You had better ask Claremanagh, or Jack Manners, who is a pal of his," said Emmy. "I can't, till I have an idea what to ask them about." "Ask whether Lyda Pavoya ever--no, I won't say it!" "Whether she ever wore the pearls? That's what you were going to say!" "So you _did_ know?" "I didn't. And I don't now. I only know what you have in your mind. I don't believe she was allowed to wear the pearls." "Why should you believe it? And even if she did, it was before you knew Peter--the Duke. Or anyhow, it was before you were _engaged_. It was when she was dancing for the Polish Relief Fund in Paris, that I saw----" "You saw what?" "Saw--her." "Emmy! You _didn't_ see her wearing the Tsarina pearls? It's not possible." "Why, of course you must be right, dear. Even though they are _blue_, they'd be like any other pearls, wouldn't they, _to see at a distance_." "That's just what you said about Pat's pearls five minutes ago: that you'd seen them only 'at a distance.'" Lady West did not reply. She put on a stricken, trapped expression, which went well with her widow's weeds. The two gazed into each other's eyes, each waiting for the other to speak. Neither heard a sound at the door until a respectable voice--such a voice as is never possessed save by a British butler or valet--announced "His Grace the Duke of Claremanagh." CHAPTER II THE EXPLANATION A perfectly charming young man came in--a young man so delightful to look at that it seemed almost too much that he should be a duke. With that merry brown face (the war had left a scar across cheek and temple), those Celtic grey eyes, that jet-black hair, that "figure for a fencer," and above all that engaging grin of his, the merest Nobody might hope to make his mark as Somebody. "Breezing in" (as Emmy had put it), he smiled his nice smile that brought a dimple like a cut line into each thin, tanned cheek. The smile was for Juliet, whose velvet throne was opposite the door, and for her he waved aloft a small, sealed white parcel. Then he saw Lady West, and his expression changed. As the saying is, his "face fell," but in half a second he had controlled his features. "How do you do?" he enquired. His voice was as pleasant as his grin, but there was a slight stiffness in his tone for the red-haired war-widow. "I'm going strong, thanks! Going in every sense of the word," Emmy assured him. "I should have taken myself off before now, only Juliet pretended not to be expecting you. Of course, the day before the wedding _is_ supposed by old-fashioned folk to be close time for brides, where their loving bridegrooms are concerned, and so----" "I'm not old-fashioned," said Claremanagh.