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.
“But you will not be here.”
“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.
“You'll ask me to come?”
“I should have asked you, anyway.”
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.
VII. THE WOMAN FROM PARIS
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.
Mr. Quentin had much to overcome if he contemplated an assault upon the icy reserve with which Dorothy Garrison's mother regarded his genial advances. She recalled the days when her daughter and he were “silly, lovesick children,” and there was not much comfort to be derived from the knowledge that he had grown older and more attractive, and that he lost no
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