“You did not fear anything of the kind. Do you really think he was one of those awful diamond robbers who are terrorizing the town? I could not sleep another wink if I thought so. Why, last spring a rich merchant and his wife were drugged in one of the cafes, taken by carriage to Watermael, where they were stripped of their valuables and left by the roadside.”
“Did you see an account of the affair in your morning paper?”
“Yes—there were columns about it.”
“Then I think eight-tenths of the crime was committed at a city editor's desk. It's my opinion these diamond thieves are a set of ordinary pickpockets and petty porch climbers. A couple of New York policemen could catch the whole lot in a week.”
“But, really, Phil, they are very bold and they are not at all ordinary. You don't know how thankful we are that this one was discovered before he got into the house. Didn't he have a knife? Well, wasn't it to kill us with if we made an outcry?” She was nervous and excited, and he had it on the tip of his tongue to allay her fears by telling what he thought to be the true object of the man's visit.
“Well, no matter what he intended to do, he didn't do it, and he'll never come back to try it again. He will steer clear of this house,” he said, reassuringly.
A week, two weeks went by without a change in the situation. Dickey Savage replied that he would come to Brussels as soon as his heart trouble would permit him to leave London, and that would probably be about the twentieth of August. In parentheses he said he hoped to be out of danger by that time. The duke was persistent in his friendliness, and Courant had, to all intents and purposes, disappeared completely. Prince Ugo was expected daily, and Mrs. Garrison was beginning to breathe easily again. The police had given up the effort to find the Garrison robber, and Turk had learned everything that was to be known concerning the house in which Courant found shelter after eluding his pursuers on the night of the affray. Quentin's shoulder was almost entirely healed, and he was beginning to feel himself again. The two weeks had found him a constant and persistent visitor at Miss Garrison's home, but he was compelled to admit that he had made no progress in his crusade against her heart. She baffled him at every turn, and he was beginning to lose his confident hopes. At no time during their tete-a-tetes, their walks, their drives, their visits to the art galleries, did she give him the slightest ground for encouragement. And, to further disturb his sense of contentment, she was delighted—positively delighted—over the coming of Prince Ugo. For a week she had talked of little save the day when he was to arrive. Quentin endured these rapturous assaults nobly, but he was slowly beginning to realize that they were battering down the only defense he had—the inward belief that she cared for him in spite of all.
Frequently he met the Duke Laselli at the Garrisons'. He also saw a great deal of the de Cartiers and Mile. Gaudelet. When, one day, he boldly intimated to Dorothy that de Cartier was in love with Louise and she with him, that young lady essayed to look shocked and displeased, but he was sure he saw a quick gleam of satisfaction in her eyes. And he was positive the catch in her breath was not so much of horror as it was of joy. Mrs. Garrison did all in her power to bring him and the pretty French girl together, and her insistence amused him.
One day her plans, if she had any, went racing skyward, and she, as well as all Brussels society, was stunned by the news that de Cartier had deserted his wife to elope with the fair Gaudelet! When Quentin laconically, perhaps maliciously, observed that he had long suspected the nature of their regard for one another, Mrs. Garrison gave him a withering look and subsided into a chilling unresponsiveness that boded ill for the perceiving young man. The inconsiderate transgression of de Cartier and the unkindness of the Gaudelet upset her plans cruelly, and she found that she had wasted time irreparably in trying to bring the meddling American to the feet of the French woman. Quentin revelled in her discomfiture, and Dorothy in secret enjoyed the unexpected turn of affairs.
She had seen through her mother's design, and she had known all along how ineffectual it would prove in the end. Philip puzzled her and piqued her more than she cared to admit. That she did not care for him, except as a friend, she was positive, but that he should persistently betray signs of nothing more than the most ordinary friendship was far from pleasing to her vanity. The truth is, she had expected him to go on his knees to her, an event which would have simplified matters exceedingly. It would have given her the opportunity to tell him plainly she could be no more than a friend, and it would have served to alter his course in what she believed to be a stubborn love chase. But he had disappointed her; he had been the amusing companion, the ready friend, the same sunny spirit, and she was perplexed to observe that he gave forth no indication of hoping or even desiring to be more. She could not, of course, know that this apparently indifferent young gentleman was wiser, far wiser, than the rest of his kind. He saw the folly of a rash, hasty leap in the dark, and bided his time like the cunning general who from afar sees the hopelessness of an attack against a strong and watchful adversary, and waits for the inevitable hour when the vigil is relaxed.