Abduction -- Fiction; Americans -- Europe -- Fiction; Love stories
Dickey sat all night beside his rolling, moaning friend, unnerved,
almost despairing, but the morning brought the change that gladdened
his heart and gave him a chance to forget his fears and
apprehensions long enough to indulge in an impressive, though
inadequate, degree of profanity, with continued reference to a
certain set of men whom the world called thieves, but whom he
designated as dogs.
About ten o'clock a telegram from Ostend came to the hotel for him.
It read: “Are you not coming to Ostend for us? Jane.” An hour later
a very pretty young lady in Ostend tore a telegram to pieces,
sniffed angrily and vowed she would never speak to a certain young
man again. His reply to her rather peremptory query by wire was
hardly calculated to restore the good humor she had lost in not
finding him at the dock. “Cannot come. Awfully sorry. Can't leave
Brussels. Hurry on. Will explain here. Richard Savage.” Her
sister-in-law and fellow-traveler from London was mean enough to
tease her with sly references to the beauty of Brussels women and
the fickleness of all mankind. And so there was stored away for Mr.
Savage's benefit a very cruel surprise.
The morning newspapers carried the story of Quentin's adventure to
the Garrison home, and Dorothy's face, almost haggard as the result
of a sleepless night, grew whiter still, and her tired eyes filled
with dread. She did not have to recall their conversation of the
night before, for it had not left her mind, but her thoughts went
back to a former conversation in which he had ridiculed the bandits.
The newspaper fell from her nerveless fingers, and she left the
table, her breakfast untouched, stealing miserably to her room, to
escape her mother's inquisitive eyes.
Her wretched state was not improved by the visit of a veiled young
woman later in the day. The visitor was undoubtedly a lady, but the
story she poured into the unwilling ears was so astounding that
Dorothy dismissed her indignantly before it was finished. The
low-voiced, intense stranger, young and evidently beautiful, told
her that Quentin's injuries were not inflicted by thieves, but by
the hired agents of one who had cause to fear him. Before Miss
Garrison could remonstrate, the stranger went into the details of a
plot so cowardly that she was horrified--horrified all the more
because, in a large measure, it sustained the charges made against
her lover by Philip Quentin. When at last she could no longer endure
the villifying recital she bade the woman to leave the house, hotly
refusing to give countenance to the lies she was telling. The
stranger desisted only after her abject pleading had drawn from the
other a bitter threat to have her ejected by the servants.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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