THE END

And so in the end Diana had her little jest, and gave Johannesburg its shock and its nine days’ wonder, and was certainly the most surprising bride of the year; though, of course, afterwards most people said they were not surprised at all, and had expected it all along.

Before the wedding a sufficiently characteristic letter found its way to a certain mission station in Rhodesia to delight the hearts of its contented occupants. After duly relating all that had transpired and how the problem had been solved, it added: “And now the only difficulty seems to be how to relieve Meryl of her superfluous fortune, in order that she and The Bear may live upon love and air, and how to save me from appearing in the guise of a heroine!...”

To her old friend Stanley she wrote gaily of the perfectly splendid surprise she had succeeded in administering to about half the English-speaking population of South Africa.

And Stanley wrote back, with many regretful qualms tugging at his heart: “The astonishment of South Africa is a mere detail. When the news reached Zimbabwe, bones that have lain buried for three thousand years rattled in their grave-clothes, and antiquities of the ages crumbled to dust. In the morning, over our coffee, Moore and I ask of the four winds and of the liquid butter and of the unyielding bread, ‘Which did he actually marry in the end, and what became of whom?’” ...