“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 ihe 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.