There was no unkindness in Fenella. Dress was her one real interest in life, and she took it seriously. When her mind turned to Allegra Muir’s wedding she could not only pass over the two-year gap and visualize every detail, but she could no more help re-dressing and re-grouping the bride and her attendants than she could stop the even flow of her breath. And the worst of it was that she was right. Nothing could have been less becoming to Allegra than all that icy white which had made her look pinched and grey, like something lost in a snowstorm. Ione was ruefully aware that she hadn’t looked any too good in it herself. And that awful lumpy girl Margot-could anything have been worse! She laughed and said,

“It’s the last time I’m going to be a bridesmaid anyhow. You have to when it’s your sister, but never again! The idea of herding a lot of girls together and putting them into something which is bound to be the last thing on earth that most of them ought to wear-well, it’s simply barbaric!”

Fenella did not laugh-she hardly ever did. She said earnestly,

“You’re too right, darling. Let me see-there was you-and Elizabeth Tremayne-and the Miller twins with all that red hair-and that frightful lumpy schoolgirl-what was her name?”

“Margot Trent. She’s a relation of Geoffrey’s, and he is her guardian. We had to have her. She looked terrible.”

Fenella shook her head sadly.

“Schoolgirls always do in white. They’re either much too fat like this Margot girl, or else they’ve got sharp red elbows and bones sticking out all over them. She still lives with them, doesn’t she? I don’t know how Allegra could! Has she fined down at all?”