Abduction -- Fiction; Americans -- Europe -- Fiction; Love stories
“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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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