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