"Has she lost any of the charm?" she asked.
"I am not quite sure. I'm to find out on Friday."
"Are you going back on Friday?" in surprise.
"Can't remember, but I think I suggested it."
"Be careful, Phil; I don't want you to turn Dorothy Garrison's head."
"You compliment me by even suspecting that I could. Her head is set; it can't be turned. It is set for that beautiful, bejewelled thing they call a coronet. Besides, I don't want to turn it."
"I think the prince could become very jealous," she went on, earnestly.
"Which would mean stilettos for two, I presume." After a moment's contemplative silence he said: "By Jove! she is beautiful, though."
Quentin was always the man to rush headlong into the very thickest of whatever won his interest, whether it was the tender encounter of the drawing-room or the dangerous conflict of the field.
When he left Lady Marnham's house late on Friday afternoon he was more delighted than ever with the girl he had once loved. He was with her for nearly an hour before the prince arrived, and he had boldly dashed into the (he called them ridiculous) days when she had been his little sweetheart, the days when both had sworn with young fervor to be true till death. She did not take kindly at first to these references to that early, mistaken affection, but his persistence won. Before the prince arrived, the American had learned how she met him, how he had wooed and won, and how she had inspired jealousy in his hot Italian heart by speaking of the "big, handsome boy" over in New York.
He secured her permission to join her in the Row on Tuesday. There was resistance on her part at first, but he laughed it off.
"You should ask me to your wedding," he said, as the prince came in.
"I've changed my mind," he said, calmly, and then smiled into her puzzled eyes. "Brussels, isn't it?"
"Yes; the middle of September," she said, dreamily.
The two men shook hands. "Sorry I can't stay for tea, Dorothy, but I promised Lord Saxondale I'd meet him at four o'clock." He did a genuinely American thing as he walked up the street. He whistled a lively air.
For two weeks Phil Quentin did not allow Dorothy to forget the old association, and then came the day of her departure for Paris. Mrs. Garrison was by no means reluctant to leave London,--not that she disliked the place or the people, but that one Philip Quentin had unceremoniously, even gracefully, stepped into the circle of her contentment, rudely obliterating its symmetrical, well-drawn lines.