The next day the Saxondales accompanied the two Americans to the railway station, bade them a fond farewell and hastened back to the home of the Baron St. Auge with new resolutions in their hearts.  The forepart of the ensuing week saw their departure from Brussels.  Deliberately they turned their backs on the great wedding that was to come, and as if scorning it completely, journeyed to Lord Bob’s ruins in Luxemburg, preferring the picturesque solitude of the tumbledown castle to the empty spectacle at St. Gudule.  Brussels may have wondered at their strange leave-taking on the eve of the wedding, but no explanation was offered by the departing ones.

When Dorothy Garrison heard that Philip Quentin had started for the United States she felt a chill of regret sink suddenly into her soul, and it would not be driven forth.  She went on to the very night that was to make her a princess, with the steel in her heart, but the world did not know it was there.  There was no faltering, no wavering, no outward sign of the emotions which surged within.  She was to be a princess!  But when the Saxondales turned their faces from her, spurning the invitation to her wedding, the pride in her heart suffered.  That was a blow she had not expected.  It was like an accusation, a reproach.

Little Lady Jane blissfully carried with her to the valley of the Alzette the consciousness that Richard Savage was very much in love with her, even though he had not found courage to tell her so in plain words.  A telegram from him stating that he and Quentin had taken passage for New York and would sail on the following day dispelled the hope that he might return.

Brussels was full of notables.  The newspapers of two continents were fairly blazing with details of the wedding.  There were portraits of the bride and groom, and the bishop, and pictures of the gowns, the hats, the jewels; there were biographies of the noted beauty and the man she was to marry.  The Brussels papers teemed with the arrivals of distinguished guests.

Overcoming Mrs. Garrison’s objections, Dorothy had insisted on and obtained special permission to have a night wedding.  She had dreamed of the lights, the splendor, the brilliancy of an after-sunset wedding and would not be satisfied until all barriers were put aside.

Dorothy’s uncle, Henry Van Dykman, her mother’s brother, and a number of elated New York relatives came to the Belgian capital, shedding their American opulence as the sun throws out its light.  The skill of a general was required to direct, manage and control the pageant of the sixteenth.  Thousands of dollars were tossed into the cauldron of social ambition by the lavish mother, who, from behind an army of lieutenants, directed the preliminary maneuvers.

The day came at last and St. Gudule’s presented a scene so bewilderingly, so dazzlingly glorious that all Brussels blinked its eyes and was awed into silence.  The church gleamed with the wealth of the universe, it seemed, and no words could describe the brilliancy of the occasion.  The hour of this woman’s triumph had come, the hour of the Italian conqueror had come, the hour of the victim had come.