Photographs of the happy couple published in the _Daily Wire_, the
_Weekly Silhouette_, the _Lady’s Dictatorial_, and the _Photographic
Smile_, hardly do the bridegroom justice. In that without the busby his
features are fixed in a painful grin, while in the other there are no
features at all. But Margot–Margot in a hobble-skirt of satin and
chiffon, with a tulle turban-veil, starred with orange-flowers in pearls
and diamonds, and a long serpent-tail train of silver brocade, hung from
her shoulders by ropes of pearls, was “almost too swee,” to quote
Margot’s Club friends. Search had been made, amongst the said friends,
many of whom were married, for a pair of five-year-old pages to carry
the bride’s train; but there being, for some reason, a dearth of babies
among Margot’s wedded intimates, the idea had to be given up.

The wedding was quite the prettiest function of the season. The eight
bridesmaids walked in moss-green _crepe de Chine_ veiled with
silver-spotted chiffon. On their heads were skull-caps of silver
tissue, each having a thirty-inch-high aigrette supported by a thin
_bandeau_ of gold, set with crystals and olivines, the gift of the
bride…. Their stockings were of white lace openwork, the left knee of
each being clasped by the bridegroom’s souvenir, a garter of gold,
crystal, and olivines. Silver slippers with four-inch heels completed
the ravishing effect.

_O Perfect Love!_ was sung before the Bishop’s Address, and the ceremony
concluded with _The Voice that Breathed_ and Stainer’s _Sevenfold Amen_.
The bridal-party passed down the nave to the strains of the Wedding
Chorus from _Lohengrin_. And there was a reception at the Werkeley
Square house of one of the dearest of Margot’s innumerable dearest
friends, and the happy pair left in their beautiful brand-new
Winston-Beeston touring car _en route_ for the old red-brick Hall in
Devonshire. Decidedly the honeymoon might have been termed ideal–and
four subsequent months of married life proved tolerably cloudless–until
Fate sent a stinging hailstorm to strip the roses from the bridal bower.

An unexpected, appalling, inevitable discovery was made in Paris in the
_Grande Semaine_, at the end of the loveliest of June seasons. It
utterly ruined–for two people–the Day of the Grand Prix, that marks
the climax of the Big Week, when the Parisian coaching-world tools its
four-in-hands to Longchamps Racecourse, and the smartest, richest, and
gayest people, mustered from every capital of Europe, parade under the
chestnut-trees that shade the sunny paddock, to display or criticise the
creations of the greatest _couturiers_.

Margot had put on an astonishing gown for the occasion…. You will
recall that the summer dress designs of 1914 _were_ astonishing; the
autumn modes promised to be even more so, according to Babin, Touchet,
and the Brothers Paillot. Skirts–already as short and as narrow as
possible–were to be even narrower; the Alpha and Omega of perfection
would be represented by the Amphora Silhouette. And Margot, revolving
before her cheval-glass in a sheath of jonquil-coloured silk _lisse_,
embroidered with blue-and-green beetle-wings, found–to her horror and
consternation—-

Shall one phrase it that Dame Nature, intent upon her essential,
unfashionable business of reproduction, was at variance with Madame
Fashion _re_ the Amphora Silhouette? The slender shape was not yet
spoilt, but long before the autumn came, no art would mask the wealthy
curves of its maternity.

*CHAPTER II*

*DAME NATURE INTERVENES*

“I can’t bear it!–I won’t bear it!” Margot reiterated. With her tumbled
hair, swollen eyes, pink uptilted nose, and the little mouth and chin
that quivered with each sobbing breath intaken, she looked absurdly
babyish for her twenty years, as she vowed that wild horses shouldn’t
drag her to Longchamps, and railed against the injustice of Fate.

“None of my married friends have had such rotten luck!” she asserted.
She stamped upon the velvety carpet and flashed at Franky a glance of
imperious appeal. “Not Tota Stannus, or Cynthia Charterhouse, or Joan
Delabrand, or anybody! Then, why me? That’s what I want to know? After
all the mascots I’ve worn and carried about with me…. Gojo and
Jollikins and the jade tree-frog, and the rest! … Every single one
given me by a different woman who’d been married for years and never had
a baby! This very day I’ll smash the whole lot!”

“By the Great Brass Hat! …”

Franky exploded before he could stop himself, and laughed until the
tears coursed down. So “Gojo,” the black velvet kitten, and
“Jollikins,” the fat, leering, naked thing that sat and squinted over
its pot-belly at its own huge, shapeless feet, and all the array of
gadgets and netsukis crowding Margot’s toilette-table and _secretaire_,
down to “Pat-Pat,” the bog-oak pig, and “Ti-Ti,” the jade tree-frog,
were so many insurances against the Menace of Maternity. By Jove! women
were regular children…. And Margot … Nothing but a baby, this poor
little Margot–going, in spite of Jollikins and Gojo, to have a baby of
her own.

“What is one to believe? Whom is one to trust in? …”

“‘Trust in.’ … My best child, you don’t mean that you believed those
women when they told you that such twopenny gadgets could work charms
of–that or any other kind?”

“Indeed, indeed they do! Tota Stannus was _perfectly serious_ when she
came to my boudoir one night at the Club, about a week before our–the
wedding…. She said–I can hear her now; ‘_Well, old child, you’re to
be married on Wednesday, and of course you know the ropes well enough
not to want any tips from me…. Still—-‘_”

“That wasn’t overwhelmingly flattering,” Franky commented, “from a
married woman twice your age. What else did she say?”

“She said I must be aware,” went on Margot, “that a woman who wanted to
keep her friends and her figure, simply couldn’t afford to have kids.”

“And you—-“