Quentin’s conclusions:  Laselli was a liar and an ass; Prince Ugo would be in Brussels within ten days; he was careless with the hearts of women and cruel with their love; French detectives are the best in the world, the most infallible; Miss Garrison loved the very ground the prince trod upon.  He also discovered that the duke could drink wine as a fish drinks water, and that he seldom made overtures to pay for it until his companion had the money in hand, ready to do so.

Turk was waiting for him when he reached his rooms, and Turk was not amiable.  A very attractive, innocent and demure young lady, who could not speak English except with her hands and eyes, had relieved him of a stickpin and his watch while he sat with her at a table not far from the man he was protecting with his vaunted “eagle eye.”

“An’ she swiped ’em right under me nose, an’ me eyes square on her, too.  These people are too keen for me.  They ain’t a fairy in New York that could ‘a’ touched me without d’ dope, lemme tell you.  I t’ought I knowed a t’ing er two, but I don’t know buttons from fishhooks.  I’m d’ easiest t’ing ’at ever went to Sunday school.”

It was with a flushed, rebellious face that Miss Garrison stepped into the victoria the next afternoon for the drive to the Bois de la Cambre.  She had come from a rather trying tilt with her mother, and, as they drove off between the rows of trees, she felt that a pair of flaming eyes were levelled from a certain upstairs window in the Avenue Louise.  The Biblical admonition to “honor thy father and thy mother” had not been entirely disregarded by this willful young lady, but it had been stretched to an unusual limit for the occasion.  She felt that she was very much imposed upon by circumstances in the shape of an unreasonable mother and an inconvenient friend.

Mr. Quentin, more in love than ever, and more deeply inspired by the longing to win where reason told him he must fail, did not flatter himself into believing that Mrs. Garrison wholly approved of the drive.  Instead, he surmised from the beginning that Dorothy’s flushed cheeks were not from happiness, but from excitement, and that he was not altogether a shadowy cause.  With rare tact he plunged at once to the bottom of the sea of uncertainty and began to struggle upward to the light, preferring such a course to the one where you start at the top, go down and then find yourself powerless to get back to the surface.

“Was your mother very much annoyed when you said you were coming out with me?” he asked.  She started and a queer little tinge of embarrassment sprang into her eyes.

“How absurd!” she said, readily, however.  “Isn’t the avenue beautiful?”

“I don’t know—­yet,” he said, without looking at the avenue.  “What did she say?” Miss Garrison did not reply, but looked straight ahead as if she had not heard him.  “See here, Dorothy, I’m not a child and I’m not a lovesick fool.  Just curious, that’s all.  Your mother has no cause to be afraid of me—­”