“Don’t faint!  I’ll tell you all about it—­to-night, eh?” he said, hastily.  He was vastly afraid she might topple over in a swoon.

“I can’t wait!” she gasped.  “And I will not faint.  You must tell me all about it this instant.  Is the other man—­is he—­where is he?”

“He’s in a hospital.  Everybody’s staring at us.  What a fool I was to say anything about it, I won’t tell you another word of it.”

“Oh, Dickey, please!” she implored.  He was obdurate and her manner changed suddenly.  With blighting scorn she exclaimed, “I don’t believe a word you’ve said.”

“O, now, that’s hardly a nice way—­” he began, indignantly, catching himself luckily before floundering into her trap.  “You will have to wait, just the same, Miss Lady Jane Oldham.  Just now we are supposed to be searching for a baroness who is good enough to come to railway stations, you’ll remember.  Have you seen her?”

At this juncture Lady Saxondale’s voice was heard behind them, and there were traces of laughter in the tones.

“Are you waiting for the mountain to come to you?  Here is the baroness, delayed by an accident to her victoria.”  Mr. Savage was presented to the handsome, rather dashing lady, whose smile was as broad and significant as that which still left traces about Lady Saxondale’s lips.  He bowed deeply to hide the red in his cheeks and the confusion in his eyes.  His companion, on the other hand, greeted the stranger so effusively that he found it possible during the moments of merry chatter to regain a fair proportion of his lost composure.

The Baroness St. Auge was an English woman, famed as a whip, a golfer and an entertainer.  Her salon was one of the most interesting, the most delightful in Brussels; her husband and her rollicking little boys were not a whit less attractive than herself, and her household was the wonder of that gay, careless city.  The baron, a middle-aged Belgian of wealth, was as merry a nobleman as ever set forth to seek the pleasures of life.  His board was known as the most bountiful, his home the cheeriest and most hospitable, his horses the best bred in all Brussels.  He loved his wife and indulged her every whim, and she adored him.  Theirs was a home in which the laugh seldom gave way to the frown, where happiness dwelt undisturbed and merriment kept the rafters twitching.  With them the two London women were to stop until after the wedding.  Saxondale was to visit his grim old castle in Luxemburg for several days before coming up to Brussels, and he was not to leave England for another week.  Baron St. Auge was looking over his estates in the north of Belgium, but was expected home before the week’s end.

Mr. Savage was in an unusual flutter of exhilaration when he rushed into Quentin’s presence soon after the ladies drove away from the Gare du Nord.  The baroness had warmly insisted that he come that evening to regale them with the story of the robbery and the account of the duel, a faint and tantalizing rumor of which had come to her ears.