And so the gay young bridegroom-to-be sailed from Calcutta light-hearted, while Harry Hardwicke counted each day's reckoning as bringing him, by leaps and bounds, nearer to the dark-eyed girl now left alone in the world. "There shall nothing come between us now, my darling one!" was the young Major's fond vow confided to the evening star, glowing in its trembling silver radiance over the spicy Indian Ocean.

Alixe Delavigne was still "Madame Berthe Louison" to the glittering circle of passengers who envied her the state in which she traveled, the slavish obeisance of the ship's officers, and the deft ministrations of those admirable servants, Jules Victor and Marie. "A great personage incognito," was the general verdict, and so the luckless swains hovering around fell off one by one, as the beautiful woman seemed to be always wrapped in an unbroken reverie. There was an anxious gleam in the lady's eyes, for she felt that she was going home to the sternest battle of her life, and she brooded now only upon the trials of the future. She never knew how near the dark angel's wing had swooped over her own defenseless head.

For the gray head now lying low had been secretly busied with plans for a huge bribe to Ram Lal which should buy him to the doing of a dark deed without a name. Only Berthe's determined attack on the granting of the baronetcy in London, and her own "lightning disappearance" had saved her from Ram Lal's cupidity. Master of the secrets of a dozen Eastern poisons, the artful confederate of her dark retinue in the silver bungalow, Ram Lal would have gladly worked Hugh Johnstone's will for his red gold. But the fierce quarrel and the precipitate flight of Berthe Louison had balked Johnstone, who fell by the very hand of the sly wretch whom he had designed to buy, as the murderer of another. The engineer hoist by his own petard. But, steadfastly looking to Valerie's child alone, she knew not the dangers which she had escaped.

"I was afraid they would kill you, Madame. Thank God, we are now safe at sea!" said Jules Victor.

"Who?" cried the startled woman.

"Why, that old wretch; he had money, and his spies were all around you," said Jules.

"Yes! Thank God! We are safe now!" mused Berthe Louison, and she bade a long adieu to the strange scenes of her pilgrimage. "I shall never see India again!" she reflected, when she passed, in a mental review, Calcutta, holy Benares, smoky Patna, brisk Allahabad, Cawnpore, where the white-winged angel broods over the innocent dead, heroic Lucknow, and crime-haunted Delhi—all these rose up in a weird panorama of the mind. Strange tales of wild adventure told by Alan Hawke returned to her now—the mysteries of Thibet, the weird ferocity of Bhotan, the quaint tales of the polyandrous Todas, and the strange story of Vijaynagar, the desecrated city whose streets are peopled but ten days in the year! A lotos land where crime broods, where the cobra hides under the painted blossoms of Death!

Glittering palaces of Agra, gloomy caves of Elephanta, the light and lovely Mohammedan architecture, the dark haunts of Kali and Bowanee, the thronged Ghats of the sacred rivers, the color medleys of the vast cities, all these busied her as she passed her days alone in study over the secretly gathered up collection of polychrome views which had taken her from the Neilgherries to Cape Comorin. Her dreams of all her subtle plans to counteract all of Johnstone's schemes, her tender intrigues to silently entrap Nadine Johnstone's girlish heart, her carefully plotted line of future action, all of these things vanished in a moment, at Aden, when a government launch steamed out, and an officer of the vessel led up Her Majesty's Consul to address the mysterious lady passenger.

There was a rush of volunteers when the woman, always brave in sorrow and ever fate defying, fainted away in a deathly trance as her eyes eagerly scanned the brief dispatch of the Viceroy. They were underway again when she realized the fearful decrees of a merciless fate! She read with a shudder, the lines again and again, whispering: "Can it be?"

"Hugh Johnstone murdered by persons—unknown at Delhi? Hasten on to London. Anstruther will have full details. Please acknowledge!"

And it was half an hour before the beautiful Nemesis who had clouded Hugh Johnstone's life had penned her simple answer. Only at night, on the voyage afterward, did she ever leave her splendid staterooms, and when Brindisi was reached she vanished with her loyal servants so quickly that even the veriest fortune hunter could not follow on her trail. "Some terrible row—some sad family happening," was the general smoking-room verdict! But, with a heart strangely yearning to the orphaned child, Berthe Louison hastened, without stopping, by Venice to lovely Munich and on to gay Paris. "She shall be mine now—mine to love, to cherish, my poor darling!" vowed the woman whose eyes shown out in an infinite pity! The cup of vengeance was dashed away from her lips for, behind the arras, the waiting headsman of Fate had struck in the night and laid low the man who would have compassed her death!

Madame Alixe Delavigne was only a gracious memory to the sympathetic men passengers who hastened on to London via Mont Cenis, but the chattering gossips of the Rue Berlioz noted, with an eager Gallic curiosity, the return of the mysterious occupant of No. 9. Jules Victor and his wife were seen, however, for only one day, busied about their usual household avocations, and then the returning travelers vanished once more to baffle the chatterers. "Diantre! Comme ils sont des voyageurs!" cried the coachman who took the wanderers to the Gare St. Lazare. There was need of haste now, for Madame Louison had received three foreign dispatches, besides a letter from Captain Anstruther, now waiting impatiently at London, and chafing over his unsuccessful queries at Morley's Hotel. The gallant Captain's letter was pregnant with governmental mysteries, and yet the beautiful woman sighed as she saw the vein of personal interest but too clearly evident in the long communication. A single glance at her tell-tale mirror reassured her, and she blushed, as she murmured:

"He believes me younger than I am!" But her brow was grave as she revolved the situation. "There will be a long struggle, a fight of love against craft and and greed! Who will win?" The fact that the Government Secret Service had already traced the delivery of the heavily insured shipment, "ex. Str. Lord Roberts," to Professor Andrew Fraser, was a first victory for the enemy! "If the old nabob wrote directly via Brindisi to his brother, then the acute old Scotch Professor may be on his guard now! And—the will?—the will? What does it provide for Nadine's future? If he had already taken the alarm-then I may have yet to fight my way to my darling's side! The black curtain of the past shall never be lifted by my hand unless—unless Andrew Fraser forces me to strike hard at his dead brother's paper card house of honorable deeds!"

As Madame Louison watched the rich moonlight silvering the broken wake of the channel steamer, she pondered over the telegrams. "Major Hardwicke and Alan Hawke are both en route to London, charged with different missions. And I am to beware of Hawke. They have only sent him away, perhaps, to veil the official game of the Indian authorities. And Alan Hawke truthfully warns me of his coming by private dispatch. Is he trying to regain his lost status? Douglas Fraser, the second executor, on his way back to India. He has passed Brindisi already. Ah! The sorrows for the dead are quickly assuaged when the 'property interests' furnish a fat picking to solicitors and the holders of dead men's gear.

"Nadine is only eighteen—she has three years to remain under legal tutelage. Perhaps Andrew Fraser may have been already coached upon his course by his unrelenting kinsman. And there is a fortune waiting for father and son in the perquisites." Madame Louison fell asleep in a vain quandary as to the precise age when men ceased to value wealth and to sell their souls for gold. That question was still undecided when the steamer Sparrow Hawk sped into Dover harbor.

The beautiful wanderer was now clearly resolved as to her future treatment of Alan Hawke. "My foe dead, the theater of war is transferred to Great Britain. He is not necessary to my own campaign, but, in watching him, I may be able to shield Nadine from his crafty plots. If he should try to secretly make friends with the Frasers, and to return to India, to aid the nephew, he might assist in robbing Valerie's child of this mountain of miserably gotten wealth.

"Thank God, I can make her rich. But Captain Anstruther will know the Viceroy's whole mind, and I can trust to him." But her cheeks were rosy red and her dancing dark eyes dropped in a sudden confusion, as the handsome aid-de-camp leaped aboard the steamer at Dover Pier.

"I did not expect you!" she murmured.

"I knew, of course, from your dispatch when you would arrive, and so I came down to further the Viceroy's business!" the soldier said in a sudden confusion. In an hour, the two who had met in such strange manner at Geneva were seated alone in a first-class compartment, and were merrily whirling on to Lud's town. Captain Anstruther's ten shillings to the guard secured them from annoying intrusion. In another compartment, Jules and Marie Victor sagely exchanged their lightning glances of Parisian acuteness.

"C'est un homme magnifique!" murmured Marie, and Jules gravely nodded, "Peut-etre, notre maitresse l'a connu longtemps. II est tres tendre!" The staff-officer "furthered the Viceroy's business" by clasping both of Alixe Delavigne's prettily-gloved hands. Her bosom heaved in a soft alarm, but she repulsed him not.

"Why did you deceive me at Geneva?" he eagerly demanded, with a trembling voice. And Alixe Delavigne's eyes were downcast and dreamy, as she whispered:

"Because I was only a poor pilgrim of Love—a lonely woman, heart hungry for the tidings of the girl whom you have brought back to me!" The young officer gazed out of the window, and in his heart, he already pardoned her.

"To those who love much, much shall be forgiven!" he reflected, with a compassion growing momentarily, for he saw the shadow of tears in the beautiful dark brown eyes. And he forbore to question her as he gazed at her glowing face.

With a sudden lifting of her stately head, the woman sitting there, her heart throbbing in a strange unrest, laid her hand lightly upon his arm.

"Listen to the strange story of a woman's life!" she said slowly. "I promised His Excellency, the Viceroy, that you should know why I left the defensive lines of my sex at Geneva! For he has trusted to me, and I wish you to know—to know that—" and the sentence was never finished, for Captain Anstruther bent over her trembling hands.

"I know that you are what I would have you ever be!" he simply said. And, with softly shining eyes, she told the soldier of her strange life path.

It was strange that they had neared London before the whole story was concluded, and their voices had sunk into softened whispers. "You may rely upon me to the death! You may depend upon me whenever you may wish to call upon me!" he said, as the train rolled into Charing Cross station. "Major Hardwicke, of the Engineers, will be my chosen ally, and I alone am to trace out this mystery of the vanished jewels. You shall conquer! I will aid you! Amor omnia vincit! You are the only heart in the world now throbbing for that sweet girl."

But when they drove to Morley's Hotel, far away on the sea, Harry Hardwicke's heart was beating fondly in all a lover's expectancy for the same friendless Rose of Delhi, and the debonnair Alan Hawke, in sight of Brindisi, mused in his deck-pacings: "I will placate Euphrosyne Delande. Justine, too, shall do my bidding, and my employer shall give me the key to this girl's heart. For I will marry Nadme Johnstone! I am a devil for luck."



CHAPTER XII. ON THE CLIFFS OF JERSEY.



Captain Anson Anstruther, A. D. C., was the very happiest of men three days later, when he watched Madame Alixe Delavigne gracefully presiding over a pretty tea table, a la fusse, in the quaint old mansion, bowered in a garden sloping down to the Thames, where Miss Mildred Anstruther, a venerable maiden aunt, had her "local habitation and, a name!" A lonely woman of colossal wealth and blue blood, high in rank, and decidedly of riper years.

"By Jove! Dear old Aunt Mildred is a tower of strength to me, just now," reflected the gallant Captain, when, as the soft shadows deepened on lawn and river, he lingered tenderly there in explanation of his official business. It was hardly "official" that Anson Anstruther had fallen into the habit of furtively addressing the now unveiled Madame Berthe Louison, as "Alixe", but it was even so. Acquaintance can ripen as rapidly on the Thames as by the Arno, given a certain impetus. And the Pilgrim of Love, though still Madame Berthe Louison in France, was Alixe Delavigne in the retreat chosen by the Viceroy.

"Pazienza! Pazienza!" smiled the young soldier, as the impassioned Alixe eagerly demanded to be allowed to approach the orphaned Nadine, at St. Heliers. "You have been so noble, so untiring, do not ruin all by precipitancy now! You see I am already secretly watching over her. I now represent the whole interests of Her Majesty's Service! And you—only your own loving heart! I must first meet Major Alan Hawke, and send him away to be busied on some apparently important duty, which will keep him away from old Andrew Fraser. We know the old professor's cunning character. Miser and pedant, he is but a shriveled parchment edition of his heartless, dead brother. We must not alarm him. We have already traced the insured packet to his hands. Now, he properly has the custody of the dead nabob's will. He may soon have to bring the girl on to London, for the legal formalities of proving it. We do not wish him to send the stolen jewels away in a sudden fright, and so hide them from us forever. If he qualifies duly as executor, and then files the will, then the estate is responsible, through him.

"We will soon know who controls your niece for the three years of her long minority. Hawke must be got out of the way. I will hoodwink him, and every British Consul in the continental towns which he visits will secretly watch him for me. Besides, Major Hardwicke and Murray will be here very scon, to aid me, and to watch Hawke. I wish Alan Hawke to blunder around, hunting for Major Hardwicke, and so give me an opportunity to do my duty secretly, and to aid you in your own labor of love. In the mean time—you must be content to rest tranquilly here; cultivate my dear old aunt, and I will come to you daily so that your quiet life in this 'moated grange' will be brightened up a bit. You see," thoughtfully said Anstruther, "whoever sent old Johnstone to his grave, he had previously spirited the heiress away—all his plans for the future were perfectly matured with all the craft of a man well versed in intrigue for forty years. His bitter hatred of you did not die with him. You may be assured that he has laid out a plan, both in his private letters and in the will to fence you forever out of this girl's life. So your work must be done in secret. If I can ever effectively help you, I must work on Andrew Fraser and not needlessly alarm both his greed and fear. As soon as it is safe, you shall take up your post near to her; but Hawke must come and go first. He must find no sign of your presence here." There was cogency in the sentimental soldier's reasoning.

"He will surely come to my Paris home at No. 9 Rue Berlioz. He knows that address!" murmured Alixe Delavigne, her eyes dropping in a sudden confusion, as a flame of jealousy lit up the young soldier's fiery glances. For Anson Anstruther had posted there on his first voyage from Geneva to find the bird flown.

"Then you may keep Marie, your maid, here," slowly replied Anstruther, "and send Jules over to Paris. Alan Hawke will surely seek for you there. Let Jules inform him that you have gone to Jitomir to attend to your Russian interests."

Alixe Delavigne bowed her head in a mute assent. Day by day the proud self-reliant woman was yielding to the imperious will of the young soldier. It was a soft, self-deception that reassured her on the very evening when he left her.

But there was one now weaving his webs at Lausanne whose fertile brain was busied with sly schemes of his own. Alan Hawke always first considered "his duty to himself" and so the acute Major decided to spy out the land before he precipitately appeared at London, or dared to risk himself at St. Agnes Road, St. Heliers.

"It is just as well to know all that Justine can tell me before I see this young dandy Anstruther, and to find out what Euphrosyne knows before I interrogate her sister," he murmured; "I must make no mistake with the Viceroy's kinsman!"

With much prevision he had telegraphed the date of his probable arrival in London to Captain Anstruther from Munich, adding that convenient fairy tale, "Delayed by illness" and he had also left this telegram behind, so as to be sent on to allow him four days leeway near Geneva.

The signature bore also an injunction to answer to Hotel Binda, Paris. "This is no little card game," muttered Hawke. "It is for rank, wealth, and the hand of Miss Million, the rose of Delhi."

Alan Hawke was practically received with open arms by the fluttering-hearted Euphrosyne, who nobly resigned herself to Justine's victory over Alan Hawke's heart. For the younger sister's letters had filled the elder's mind with rosy dreams of enhanced family prosperity.

"Only this telegram. That is all!" murmured the preceptress, as she handed the Major a dispatch dated at St. Heliers, stating, "Arrived, well, news of Mr. Johnstone's assassination just received. Will write!"

"This is all I know of this strange homecoming, as yet!" summed up the child of Minerva.

Hawke softly delved into Mademoiselle Euphrosyne's inner consciousness until he knew all the corners of the simple woman's heart.

"I am quite sure that she speaks the simple truth!" he decided, after he had informed the Swiss woman of his address, "Hotel Binda, Paris." "I must go on there by the night train," he at once resolved. "Here is a juncture where all our various interests are deeply involved. You and Justine may lose the well-earned reward of years. I must be near Justine, now, to protect you both. I fear this old mummy Fraser! If he controls the fortune, then he and his hopeful son will probably steal half of it. Thats a fair allowance for an ordinary executor! It is all for one, and, one for all, now! Write under seal to Justine that I am near—only do not mention names!" With an affected tenderness, Hawke kissed the pallid lips of the daughter of Minerva, and slipped away to Lausanne, whence he took the midnight train for Paris.

"I might look around and dispose of my jewels in Paris," he thought as he neared that "gay and festive city." But his serious business with the Credit Lyonnais as to the negotiation of the four "raised" bills of exchange, and his desire to at once come to terms with Madame Berthe Louison, caused him to postpone the vending of the jewels so neatly extorted from Ram Lal.

"I have lots of ready money now—too much, even, for safety in travel, and the jewels will keep." With a strange anxious craving to see his fair employer he drove directly to No. 9 Rue Berlioz on his arrival in Paris. The impassive face of Jules Victor met his gaze at the door.

"Madame, suddenly summoned to Poland, had begged Monsieur le Major to address her by letter, as telegrams were most unreliable in Russian Poland. Monsieur would, however, surely find letters at his London address, and it was true that Madame had not expected Monsieur's arrival for a fortnight."

"I don't believe a damned word of this fellow's yarn. There is some sly juggling here!" ejaculated the Major as he drove back to the Hotel Binda. His brow was black as he descended, and it grew blacker still when he read a telegram from Euphrosyne Delande. He studied over the unwelcome news while he made a careful business toilet to visit the Credit Lyonnais. And a white rage shone out upon his handsome face as he learned that Justine was useless to him now. "Discharged without even a reward! Thrust out like a beggar without a word of warning." "Justine on her way home. Passed through Paris last night. Can you not return?" The signature "Euphrosyne" was a guaranty of the unwelcome truth. Major Hawke swore a deep and bitter oath as he penned a telegram to the Swiss preceptress: "Coming to-night. Arrive to-morrow at ten o'clock. Keep all secret." And he boldly signed the name "Alan Hawke" to that and to a message to Captain Anson Anstruther: "Delayed four days here by private business."

He raged as he hastily soliloquized: "I will at once present these drafts regularly through the Credit Lyonnais. I will go and get the whole story from Justine. I will pay off that tiger cat, Madame Louison, for her sneaking away. She fancies she has done with me now! Ah! By God! She thinks so? Wait! And this old Scotch saw-file! I'll break him up! If I can only trace those stolen jewels to him, I'll have them or send the old miser off in irons to a life transportation! I begin to see the whole game at last! And I swear that I'll get to the girl if I have to carry her off!"

He went down to the Credit Lyonnais in an elegant "mufti" garb, and depositing a thousand pounds sterling to his credit, left the four drafts for five thousand pounds each for collection, carelessly referring to Messrs. Grindlay & Co., of Delhi, London, and many other places, and mentioning the name of that eminent private native banker, money-lender, and jeweler, the well-known Ram Lal Singh. "He shall back his indorsement!" laughed Alan Hawke.

With a lordly insouciance, Major Alan Hawke then strolled out of the great bank and deliberately arranged his line of future action while he was taking his ease at his inn.

"First, to pick up all the threads of this queer intrigue through Justine. I must go back to her at Geneva. Then, to be sure that Berthe Louison is not repeating her cunning Delhi tricks with the dead man's brother. She might frighten him. Then, armed at all points, I must hasten on to report to Anstruther. I must have him give me a short leave as soon as I can get it, but before I open my siege trenches I must develop all the enemy's strength. What the devil is Berthe Louison up to now?"

In the night train, speeding back to Geneva, Major Hawke remembered some old desperate associates of an enforced "social eclipse" at Granville-sur-Mer. "With a half a dozen resolute fellows I might hang around Jersey and, perhaps, force my way into the stronghold. It depends on where the mansion is located. If the jewels are there, I will either have them or else bend the old man to my will by threatened disclosures. But I must first fool Anstruther and my pretty employer. If Justine had only remained at Jersey I might have easily won my way to the girl's side. And yet she will be under a long three years guardianship." Some busy devil at his side whispered: "She would be helpless if she were carried off." And as the enraged schemer finished the last of a dozen cigars and took a pull at his pocket flask, he disposed himself to sleep, grumbling.

"They have upset all the chessmen. Old Fraser and the Louison, too, are playing at cross purposes—evidently. They have, however, spoiled my little game. I will spoil theirs!" He grinned as he decided "I will do a bit of the Romeo act with Justine, and come back by Granville to Boulogne. If the old gang is to be found there, I may get one of them to spy the whole thing out. All these Jersey people are half French in their birth and ways. I can sneak some fellow in from Granville. There might be a chance. I'll get to the old fellow, or the girl, or the jewels—by God! I will! For I hold the trump cards."

And yet his flattering hopes of gaining a permanent rank returned to affright him in planning such a bold deed. "Ah! I must get some trusty fellow—perhaps, in London," he muttered as his head dropped, and the train bore him on to the halls of learning, where poor Justine was now weeping on her sister's bosom, and unveiling all the secrets of a hungry heart to the sympathetic Euphrosyne.

But, saddest of all the coterie who had trodden the tessellated floors of the marble house at Delhi, was a lonely girl sobbing herself to sleep, that very night, in a gray castellated mansion house perched upon a sunny cliff of Jersey.

The fair gardens and splendid halls of the luxurious home seemed but the limits of a cheerless prison to the broken-hearted girl who had been astounded when her one friend, Douglas Fraser, the companion of a thirty-five days' journey, left her without a word. Nadine Johnstone had opened her heart, shyly, to her manly young kinsman, Douglas Fraser. And yet she guarded, as only a maiden's heart can, the secret of the blossoming love for Hardwicke—the man who had saved her life. She asked her hungry heart if he would follow on her way, led by the appeal of her shining eyes.

Worn, harassed, and wearied out by travel, she had sought a refuge in Justine Delande's clinging arms, on the night of their arrival from Boulogne, for the path from India had been but a series of shadow-dance glimpses of strange scenes. The ashen face of the tottering old pedant had offered her no welcome to a happy home.

"How hideously like my father, this old bookworm," murmured the frightened girl in a strange repulsion, as she fled away to her room. It was a grateful relief when the servant maid announced that the travelers would be served in their rooms.

"The Master lives entirely alone," the girl said shortly. Late that first night the lonely girl sat gazing at the windows rattling under the flying wrack, while Douglas Fraser and his father communed below her until the midnight hour. Suddenly Justine Delande was summoned to join them "on urgent business," and the heiress of a million sat with clasped hands, murmuring:

"Will he ever find me out here? This is only a cheerless prison. I am, forever, lost to the world." There was that in Justine Delande's face on her return which startled the heart-sick wanderer.

"Ask me nothing—nothing to-night. Only sleep, my darling," murmured the devoted Swiss. The shadows deepened over Nadine Johnstone as she fell asleep dreaming of her mother, the gentle vision, and, the absent lover of her girlish heart.

Sunny gleams came with the dawn, and Nadine was already wandering in the beautiful gardens of "The Banker's Folly," as the home perched on the hill was termed. It was there that Douglas Fraser suddenly came upon her, walking with the white-faced Justine. Both women could see that he bore tidings of grave import, and another shadow settled on Nadine's heart, as she clasped Justine's hand.

Her cousin's face was grave as he said, in a broken voice: "I must hasten away instantly to catch the boat, and I have to return immediately to India. There's no time for a word. My father will tell you all! It is a matter of life and death to our whole family interests. May God keep you, Nadine!" the young man kindly said, as he bent and kissed her hand. "I have tried to make your long journey bearable!" And then, a wrinkled face at a window appeared to end the coming disclosure, for Douglas was softening. A harsh voice rose up in a half shriek:

"Douglas! Douglas!" and the young man turned back, without another word, springing away, over the graveled walks. Nadine's face grew ashen white, as the presage of coming disaster chilled her heart.

Without a word, Justine Delande led the startled girl into the house. "You are to see your uncle at once! After our breakfast! And I will be with you." faltered Justine, with an averted face.

The orphaned girl was now dimly conscious of some impending blow. She had been frightened at the solemnity of Douglas Fraser's hasty farewell, and, while Justine Delande affected to touch the breakfast spread in their rooms by the Swiss lady's maid, now gloomy in an attack of heimweh, Nadine saw a four-wheeler rattle away over the lawn, while old Andrew Fraser grimly watched it until the gates clanged behind the departing Anglo-Indian. Over the low wall, on the road, Douglas Fraser caught a last glimpse of the graceful girl standing there. He sadly waved an adieu, and Nadine Johnstone was left with but one friend in the world, save the silent Swiss governess. Though the two women were sumptuously lodged "in fair upper chambers," opening east and south, with their maid near at hand, the gloomy chill of the silent household had already penetrated the lonely girl's heart. No single sign of the warmer amenities. Only books, books, dusty books, by the thousand, piled helter-skelter in every available nook and cranny.

The servants were slouching and sullen, and they moved about their duties with gloomy brows. Even the gardener and his two stout boys struck sadly away with mattock and spade as if digging graves. No chirp of bird, no baying of a friendly dog, no burst of childish merriment broke the droning silence. And this was the home to which a father had doomed his only child.

When the frightened maid tapped at the door to summon her mistress, her feeble rapping sounded like a hammer falling sadly on the hollow coffin lid. The girl stammered, "The master would like to see you both in the library." And with a sinking heart Nadine Fraser Johnstone descended the stair.

She had only cast a frightened glimpse at the yellowed, bony face, the cavernous eye sockets, the bushy eyebrows, beneath which a cold intellectual gleam still feebly flickered. Andrew Fraser had bent his tall form over her, and peering down at her had whispered after their few words of greeting:

"Did ye gain aught in knowledge of Thibet in your Indian life? My life work lies there, and Hugh has sorely disappointed me. He was to send me books and maps and papers for my 'History of Thibet and the Wanderings of the Ten Tribes.'" With a confused negation the girl had fled away to the cheerless shelter of the great rooms whose drab and gray arrangements bespoke the Reformatory or a Refuge for the Friendless.

And the stern old scholar waited for the fluttering bird whom adverse Fate had driven into his dismal lair with all the pompous severity of a guardian and trustee.

Seated at a long desk littered with a multitude of papers, Professor Andrew Fraser coldly bowed the two women to convenient seats. The parvenu banker who had fled away after a bankruptcy due to the erection and embellishment of "The Folly," had approved a semi-medieval plan of construction which suggested a Norman stronghold or a Corsican mansion arranged for a stubborn defense. Books, globes, maps, and papers littered the floors, and were piled nearby in convenient heaps with tell-tale flying signals of copious note taking. It was a bristling Redoubt of Learning.

But on this sunny morning the retired Professor of Edinburg University held sundry letters, dispatches, and legal papers clutched in his claw-like hands. His eye rested upon Justine Delande, in a semi-hostile glare, as he slowly said:

"I've sent for ye, as in the place of your father's daughter, ye must know of the changes that come to us, with the chances of Life and the sair ways o' the world." He was nervously fumbling with a selection of the papers and he paused and coughed ominously. "There has come to us news which has posted my son Douglas hastily back to India, to do your father's last bidding."

Nadine Johnstone's trembling hand clutched Justine Delande's still rounded arm.

"Her father the double of this grim ogre?" There was horror in her conjecture, but no pang of affection at the easily divined disclosure. "The news came to us suddenly, yesterday, and Douglas and I are left now to screen ye from the robbers and cormorants of the world! Ye're one of the richest women in Britain now—Hugh Fraser's daughter—for yere guid father is no more! A sudden death—a sudden death! and his will leaves you to me as a legal charge, for yere body and yere estate, till ye come o' the legal age. T'hafs the next three years!"

With a single glance of stern deprecation, Andrew Fraser saw the girl totter and her head fall upon the bosom of the woman who had "sorrowed of her sorrows" in all the years of the lonely colorless infancy, childhood, and budding womanhood! The old bookworm clung to the papers as if that "documentary evidence" was an absolute guaranty, and he held it ready to proffer in support of his theorem. His toughened heart-strings were silent at natural affection's touch, and only twanged to the never-dying greed for gold—useless gold!

In an unmoved wonder, the senile scholar listened to the broken sobs of the child of Valerie Delavigne. He was astounded at her financial carelessness, when she moaned:

"Let me go away! Let me go!" and then she cried, "What care I for all this money—this useless wealth. He is gone! I am now alone in the world! And—and, now I never will know the story of the past!" There was a stony gleam on the old Scotchman's face as the girl sobbed, "Mother! Mother! Lost to me forever, now." The cunning old Scotchman's face darkened at the mention of that long-forbidden name. The woman who had deserted the rich nabob.

With uneasy, tottering steps the old scholar paced the room, watching the two women in a grim silence, until Justine Delande, with a woman's questioning eyes, pointed to the rooms above.

"Before ye go, and I'll now give ye these whole papers and documents, I would say that my dead brother Hugh has here in his will laid out yere whole life for the three years of the minority. He has put on me the thankless labor and care of watching over yere worldly gear, and of keeping ye safely to the lines of prudence and of a just economy. And my duty to my dead brother, I will do just as his own words and hand and seal lay it down! To-morrow I will have much to say to you. If ye will come back to me here, Madame Delande, when my ward goes to her own room, I'll see ye at once on a brief matter o' business. And now I'll wait till ye take her away!" It was a half hour before Justine Delande descended to the rooms where the old egoist chafed at the loss of time stolen from the maundering researches on Thibet and the Ten Tribes.

"Woman! woman! I sent up for ye twice!" he barked, as the half-defiant Swiss governess at length joined him.

"I know my duty to my dear child, Nadine!" said the stout-hearted governess, with a crimsoning cheek. The old man opened a check-book, and sternly said:

"Sit ye there! I'll arrange yere business in a few minutes! And, then, ye can find other duties, and know them as ye care to. I'll have none of yere hoity-toity airs here!" Regardless of the look of horror stealing over the face of Justine, the old man coldly proceeded as if receding from the pulpit. "My late brother, Hugh Fraser Johnstone, of Delhi and Calcutta, has sent me his own last instructions and orders. I have here the last receipt for the stipend which ye have been allowed—and, I'm duly following his orders, when I give ye this check for the six months that has yet too to run.

"And-look ye here! A twenty-pound note to take ye back to Geneva! When ye sign this receipt for the stipend, ye are free to leave my house at once. There's some letters and a couple of telegrams for ye! Bring me the maid, now, and I'll pay her in the same way; and, moreover, I will give her ten pounds to take her home. Then, ye'll both remember ye are not to sleep another night here! I'll give ye the whole day to say good-bye and to make up yere boxes. There will be two four-wheelers here after yere dinner, and ye'll find the Royal Victoria Hotel suited to ye both, at St. Heliers. If ye choose to go, the morning boat takes ye to Granville. Bring the maid here now! Do you linger, woman? I'll be obeyed and forthwith!"

With flashing eyes, Justine Delande sprang up, facing the flinty-hearted old Scotsman. "I will never abandon Nadine here! She will die in your cheerless prison!" she cried. But the old pedant glowered pitilessly at the startled woman, who cried: "To turn me away like a dog—after these many years!" And her sobs woke the echoes of the vaulted room.

"Hearken, my leddy!" barked old Fraser, "One more word, and I'll have the gardener put ye off the premises! The girl ye speak of is young and strong. She'll have just what the Court gives her, and what her father laid out for her, and I'll work my will, and I'll do his will. Ye're speaking to no fule, here now! Take yere money and yere letters, and bring me the maid, or I'll bundle ye both in a jiffey into the Queen's highway. I'll have none but my own servants here—now!"

Then Justine Delande, without another word, stepped forward, and, seizing the pen, signed her receipt for wages due, in silence. She defiantly gathered up her withheld letters and papers. She returned in a few moments with the maid, whose ox-like eyes glowed in the sudden joy of a return to Switzerland. For the ranz des vaches was now ringing in the stout peasant girl's ears. "There, that's all, now!" rasped the old man, when the maid had gathered up her dole. "The butler will go down to town with ye and see ye safe, and he will leave word at the bank to pay yere checks. I keep no siller here. It's a lonely house." And the dead tyrant worked his will through the living one, as his stony heart had laid out the future.

Justine Delande faced the old miser pedant as she indignantly cried: "God protect and keep the poor orphan who has drifted out of one hell on earth into another! Your dead brother robbed her of a mother's love, and you—you old vampire—you would bury her alive! She shall know yet her dead mother's love, and—her brutal father's shame!"

Before the excited woman could select another period of flowing invective from her thronging emotions, the gaunt old scholar had pushed her out into the hall and slid a bolt upon his door, with a vicious click. There were certain qualms of fear already unsettling his triumphant calmness.

While Justine Delande, with flaming cheeks, sprang up the stair, and barricaded herself with the sobbing heiress, the old man, his eyes gleaming with all the conscious pride of tyranny, seated himself and indited a note directed to

PROFESSOR ALARIC HOBBS, (of Waukesha University, U. S. A.), ROYAL VICTORIA HOTEL, ST. HELIERS, JERSEY.

He had already dismissed from his mind the sorrows of the orphaned niece—he cared not for the spirited onslaught of the Swiss woman—and he rejoiced in his heart at the fact of Douglas Fraser's departure to gather up the loose ends of his dead brother's great fortune. "It's a vixenish baggage—this Swiss teacher! Hugh was right to bid me cut those cords at once and forever between them! The girl shall have discipline, and, that baggage, her mother, is well out of the world! I'll work Hugh's will! She shall come under!" With a secret glee he ran over a schedule of chapter headings upon Thibet, Tibet, Tubet—the land of Bod—Bodyul or Alassa. He was drifting back into the dreamland of the pedant, but a few hours deserted.

"This Yankee fellow has a keen wit! His ideas on the Ten Tribes are wonderful! His life has been a study of the Mongolians, the Tartars, and the history of the American Indians! I will be a bit decent to the fellow, and I'll get at the meat of his knowledge! He's young and a great chatterer, maybe, but a help to me. Body o' me! But to get there myself—to Thibet.

"Ah!" sighed the old misanthrope, "I'm too old now! And Hugh has failed me! Nothing from him. This sair blow cuts off the last hope! And no educated men of Thibet ever travel! Blindness—blindness everywhere!" he babbled on, while above him, two women, in an agonized leave-taking, were silently sobbing in each other's arms, while the happy Swiss servant made her boxes. Nadine Johnstone's utter wretchedness gave her no sense of a loss by the hand of Death. For a father's love she had never known, and her mother—a mystery!

The two women cowering together above the old pedant's den with sorrowing hearts communed while Justine Delande directed the packing of her slender belongings. There was a new spirit of revolt stirring in Nadine Johnstone's breast, and her face glowed with the resentment of an outraged heart. When all was ready for Justine's flitting, the heiress of a million pounds finished a little memorandum, which she calmly explained to the Swiss preceptress. The sense of her future rights stirred her like a bugle blast, and with clear eyes, she looked beyond the three years toward Freedom.

"It rests with you, Justine, as to whether I am left friendless for three years of a gloomy captivity. First you are to telegraph to Major Harry Hardwicke, Royal Engineers, Delhi, and if you receive no reply, then telegraph to General Willoughby for the Major's address. When at Granville, and, not before, send this letter to Major Hardwicke at the 'Junior United Service Club, London'." The beautiful girl was blushing rosy red as the sympathetic Swiss folded her to her breast. "Then, when you get to Paris, go to No. 9 Rue Berlioz, and leave this letter there for Madame Berthe Louison. Go yourself. Trust no one. When you have conferred with dear Euphrosyne, you can send all your letters to Madame Louison at Paris under cover. She will find out a safe way to get them to me—even if she has to send her man, Jules, over here. He is quick-witted, and he will find a way to reach me."

There was a dawning wonder in Justine's eyes.

"Who is this strange Madame Louison? Can you trust her?"

"Ah! Justine!" murmured Nadine, "She is only one who loves me, for love's own sake, but I know I can trust her. She knows something of my mother's past life—something that I do not know. This old tyrant will now try to cut me off from all the outside world. He has had some strange power given to him by the father who was only my father in name.

"I will obey you. I swear it!" cried Justine. "And old Simpson will probably be coming on soon. He loves you. He will serve you."

"Yes," joyously exclaimed Nadine, with a glowing face. "And he adores Major Hardwicke, whose father saved his life at Lucknow. There is one dawning hope. You are not to write one word till you hear from me. I know that Madame Louison will manage to send Jules to me in some safe disguise," she proudly cried, "and remember—I shall not be always a poor prisoner with her hands tied. The day of my deliverance comes. When I am twenty-one, I can reward both you and Euphrosyne. She shall have a home to live in ease. And you,—you shall go out into the world with me, and aid me to find my mother. Even in the tomb I shall find her. I shall know of her love. For I shall see her loving face, even only in a picture. The face that has blessed me in my dreams."

Justine Delande saw a future reward awaiting the two faithful guardians of the childhood of Miss Million. With a sudden impulse, she cried: "There is one to aid even nearer to us now than Major Hardwicke. For I have a telegram from Euphrosyne, that Major Haivke is at Geneva."

Nadine Johnstone rose and seized both of Justine's hands: "Promise me now, by my dead mother's grave, that you will never tell that man anything of our secret compact of to-day! I fear him! I disliked him from the first! He had strange dealings with the dead." The girl's face was stern. "If I am approached by him in any way, I will cease every communication with you forever! I will have no aid of Alan Hawke."

And when the parting hour came, Justine Delande was amazed at the cold dignity with which Nadine Johnstone faced the grim old uncle. It was only at the gate of the "Banker's Folly," that the heiress for the last time kissed her friend in adieu. "Fear not for me. I have learned the lesson of Life. Remember!" she whispered. "Keep the faith! Guard my trusts!" and then, Justine sobbed: "Loyal a la, mort!"

The evening shades were darkening the sculptured shores of Rozel Bay, where clumsy luggers lay far below, high and dry on the beach, behind the great masonry pier. Skiffs and fishing-boats lined the shores, and the soft breeze moved the foliage of the luxuriant garden. The white stars were peeping out and twinkling in the gray and lonely sea, as Nadine shivered and walked firmly back to the portico, where the old recluse awaited her.

With a stiff motion of perfunctory courtesy, he motioned the heiress into the frosty-looking drawing-room, now lit up with spectral gleams of wax candles. For he would treat his ward with a frozen dignity.

Andrew Fraser coughed in a hollow warning and wasted no words in his first bulletin of "General Orders." "I have here a certified copy of your late father's will," he said, "for your perusal. You will see all the conditions of life which he has wisely laid down for you. I have telegraphed on to London for his solicitor to send a representative here, and the original testament will be duly filed at Doctors' Commons, at once. I shall at once provide you with suitable women attendants. I have already engaged a proper housekeeper, to whom you can state all your wishes. With regard to money matters and your correspondence, you must consult me! For the present, you will readily see that I deem it imprudent for you to leave these spacious and splendid grounds! But, ye'll find ways to busy yourself. Women always do!"

The old pedant marveled at the young woman's composure, for she simply bowed and awaited a termination of the interview. Slightly disconcerted, he abruptly demanded: "Have you anything to say?"

"Only this, Andrew Fraser," coldly replied the heiress. "Your sending away the only woman whom I know in the world has marked you as a tyrant and a jailer." Her spirit was as unyielding as his own, and he winced.

"Ye'll find I had your father's warrant. I'll go on to the end and obey him! There are to be no old associations kept up, and when ye come to your own ye can do all ye will! I'll go my way in my duty and do it as it seems right!" When he finished he was alone, for the daughter of Valerie Delavigne had passed him with a glance of unutterable contempt.

There was fire in the eye of the rebellious girl, and the elastic firmness of youth in her tread, but above stairs, in her own lonely rooms, her courage faded away quickly. But she wrapped her sorrows in her own proud young heart and turned her eyes to the far East. "Will he come?" she murmured.

When the clumsy island serving girl had trimmed the fire and drawn the heavy curtains, Nadine Johnstone locked her doors. She sat spellbound, with a wildly beating heart, until she had read the last of the sixteen provisions of her father's vindictive will. Though the whole fortune was left absolutely to her, with the exception of twenty-five thousand pounds each to Andrew Fraser and his son, she was tied up by restrictions so infamously brutal, that her three years of minority stretched out before her as a death in life. Five hundred pounds a year of pin money were allowed to her until her majority, "to be expended with the approval of her guardian."

In an agony of lonely sorrow she threw herself, dressed, upon her bed and sobbed herself into forgetfulness, her last cry for help mingling the names of Berthe Louison and Harry Hardwicke. "Will Justine be true to her oath?" she faltered, as she drifted into the blessed release of dreamland.

As the night wore on, Justine Delande, tossing on her bed in the Royal Victoria Hotel, waited for the dawn, to sail for Granville. She had telegraphed in curt words her dismissal, and she burned to reach Geneva, for to her the sight of Alan Hawke's face was the one oasis in her desert of sorrow.

Long after Nadine Johnstone had closed her tired eyelids, stern old Andrew Fraser cowered below, glowering over his library fire, clad in a huge plaid dressing gown. His greedy eyes watched the dancing flames, and he rubbed the thin palms in triumph, while he sipped his nightly glass of Highland whisky grog. It had been a famous secret campaign for the surviving brother.

"If all goes on well; all goes well!" he crooned. "There's Douglas, gone for good! The boy is young and soft-like. He might fall into this pert minx's hands as young Douglas with Queen Mary of old. And, thank God, he knows nothing of the packet of jewels! Not a soul knows in the wide world! Why should I not save them for myself and turn them into gold? Yes, save them for myself. For the boy? But he never must know! Ah! I must hide them well! This stubborn girl knows nothing! That is right! Janet Fairbarn will be here in two days, and I'll have another man to keep watch; yes, and a good dog, too! For the gallants must never cross my wall!"

"He! He! She'll no fule with Janet Fairbarn," he gloated, "and the will gives me every power. I must find a place of safety for the jewels," he mused. "I'm glad that I burned Hughie's letter, as he told me. There's nothing now to show for them. The bank would not be safe. Never must they go out of my hands. And, I can write a sealed letter for Douglas, to be opened by him alone, if I should be called away. I can put it in the bank, and take a receipt and send the boy the receipt. But, no human being must know that I have them." He tottered away to his sleep murmuring, "But safer still, to turn them into yellow gold. There's a deal of them. I must find out in time how to dispose of them, but never till the lass above is gone and my accounts all discharged." And the old miser, who had already robbed his dead brother, slept softly in love with his own exceeding cunning.

Of all the loungers on the wind-swept wharf at Granville-sur-Mer next day, decidedly the most natty was Jules Victor, who was now awaiting the return of the little St. Helier's packet, to engage a special cabin for himself, with all a Gaul's horror of the stormy passage. He sprang forward, in a genuine surprise, as Mademoiselle Justine Delande, aided by the stout Swiss maid, tottered over the gangplank. "Madame is ill, a la bonne heure! Let me conduct you to the Hotel Croix d'Or, where Madame Louison is even now awaiting the Paris train." The ex-zouave was a miracle of politeness and, he proudly conducted Justine to a waiting fiacre, having deftly reserved himself the choice of staterooms. With the skill of his artful kind, Jules hastened upstairs at the Hotel Croix d'Or, to announce to his mistress the lucky find of a windy afternoon on Granville quay.

That night, when Justine Delande reached Paris, she was assured in her heart that her own future fortunes were safe, and that her sister would surely be the recipient of Nadine Johnstone's future bounty. For Madame Berthe Louison, ever armed against possible treachery, announced her own instant departure for Poland. "But, I leave Jules in charge in Paris, and he will find the way to deliver your letters to your young friend."

When Justine Delande was safely escorted to the train by the smiling Madame Berthe Louison, she proceeded to register a packet for London, addressed to "Major Harry Hardwicke."

That young officer's heart was light, three days later, when he received the letter of Nadine which Madame Louison had cajoled easily from the Swiss woman. And the happy Major's heart was no lighter than Nadine's for the watchful Janet Fairbarn, now on duty, with her selected subordinates, wondered to see the pale-faced girl laugh merrily as she chatted over the garden wall with a strolling French peddler. "I may trade at the gate, may I not, Miss Janet," said Nadine, "or is that one of the crimes?" But Jules Victor had brought her a new life. She whispered, "He will come!"



CHAPTER XIII. AN ASIATIC LION IN HIDING.



Madame Alixe Delavigne sat alone in her snug apartment of the Hotel Croix d'Or, at Granville-sur-Mer, four days after Justine Delande had been driven forth from the Banker's Folly! The perusal of a long letter from Jules Victor was interrupted by the arrival of a telegram from that rising young soldier, Captain Anson Anstruther. It needed but a single glance to call the resolute woman to action.

Smartly ringing the bell, she ordered the maid, her bill, and a voiture to convey her to the Boulogne station. "So, Hardwicke and Captain Murray are safely in London! Major Hawke is at Geneva, and I am to hide at Rosebank Villa until he has reported and been sent away on his continental tour of the great jewel dealers!"

With flying fingers the lady soon penned a letter addressed to "Monsieur Alois Vautier, Marchand-en-petit, Hotel Bellevue, St. Aubin, Jersey." "He can telegraph to me at Richmond, and one of us will soon be on the ground to aid him! Now, 'the longest way round is the nearest way home!'" laughed the ci-devant Madame Louison, as she departed for Boulogne, an hour later, having carefully mailed her letter personally, and sent a brief telegram to the active Jules Victor.

The ex-Zouave had easily made the rounds of the pretty islet of Jersey, in his capacity of merchant of small wares, long before Alixe Delavigne, braving the stormy channel, had proceeded from Folkestone directly to Richmond, and hidden herself in the leafy bowers of Rosebank Villa. Smiling, gay and debonnair with all the women servants, he had a pinch of snuff, a cigar of fair quality, or a pipe full of tabac for coachman and groom, supplemented with many a petit verre from his capacious flask. His Gallic gallantry, with the gift of a trinket or ribbon, made him welcome with simple milk-maid or pert house "slavey," and the dapper little Frenchman was already an established favorite in the wine-room of the Hotel Bellevue.

His greatest triumph, however, was the secret demonstration of the cheapness of Jersey prices to the London sewing woman and smart lady's maid, now chafing under Janet Fairbarn's iron rule at the "Banker's Folly." "Norn d'un pipe! But I have to make shameful rabaissements de prix," muttered Jules, as he adroitly worked upon the susceptibilities of the two new maid servants. While one or the other of these women always accompanied Miss Nadine Johnstone in her daily wanderings through the splendid gardens of the Folly, the merry voice of Jules Victor was often heard by them singing on his way down the road. The gift of a famous brule guenle had propitiated the simple Jersey gardener, whose stout boy rejoiced in a new leather jacket, almost a gift, and the second man, Andrew Fraser's reinforcement, a famous drinker, was soon a nightly companion of "Alois Vautier" at the one little "public," down under the scarped hill at Rizel Bay.

Andrew Fraser, closeted with the London lawyer, had almost forgotten the existence of Nadine Johnstone.

A formal interview as to the filing of her father's will, a mere mute exhibition of perfunctory courtesy, released Nadine to her own devices, while Professor Andrew Fraser returned to his afternoon studies with that famous young Yankee savant, Professor Alaric Hobbs, of Waukesha University.

The beautiful captive was now happy in dissembling her contentment, for, though the sharp-featured Scotch housekeeper, Janet Fairbarn, keenly watched all her outgoings, sending always one of the women as an "outside guard," the heiress had learned some of woman's secret arts quickly. The peddler, Alois Vautier, brought to her letters and messages which made her lonely heart light, even in her stately semi-durance. And the epistles of Major Harry Hardwicke left her with a heart trembling in delight after their perusal.

And so it fell out that four days after Alixe Delavigne had returned to Rosebank Villa, that a packet of important letters was smuggled past the droning Professor's picket line, one of which caused Nadine Johnstone to hide her tell-tale blushes in her room.

"To-morrow I will come by, to deliver some little purchases of the maids! Have your answers all ready. I will be here at ten, at the garden gate!" Long after the Yankee Professor had left the "Folly" for St. Heliers that night, the lonely girl bent her beautiful head over the pages, destined to safely reach her lover's eyes in fair London town. And to Berthe Louison, she now poured out her loving heart, for she knew that her protecting friends would soon be near her.

"We are waiting, watching, and planning," wrote Alixe Delavigne. "Be cheerful—silent—watchful! I must be near you, I must see you, face to face, to tell you all the story of the past! I will then tell you, my own darling child, of the mother whom you have never known. But, first, Major Hardwicke must open a way to your side! Beware of the schemes of Alan Hawke! He will be here to-morrow, and he may steal over to Jersey, though his duty takes him for a month to the Continent! You will surely see Major Hardwicke before you see me for Andrew Fraser might take alarm at a sight of my face and so hide you away from us all!"

Miss Mildred Anstruther was a delicate symphony in gray, as she gracefully presided the next evening over the dinner table at which Alixe Delavigne, Captain Anstruther, Major Hardwicke, and Captain Murray merrily discussed the sudden hastening of Captain Eric Murray's nuptials. Hardwicke's duty as "best man" was now the only bar to the beginning of a campaign destined to foil Andrew Fraser's Loch Leven tactics of imprisoning his niece and ward.

"You will have but a brief honeymoon, Eric!" laughed Hardwicke.

"You have promised to stand by me, Harry," replied his friend. "See me married to-morrow, then a week's honeymoon at Jersey is all that I ask! I can bestow my wife there with a dear friend, who has the prettiest old Norman chateau-maison on the island, and after that be near you there at Rozel Bay to work up the final discomfiture of this old vampire. I only claim the attendance of the whole party at my wedding, then I will disappear and spy out the ground for you long before you are ready to astonish the dreamy old bookworm. I have made my own plans, and Flossie has agreed to our runaway trip 'in the interests of the service'! She is a soldier's daughter, remember!" Miss Mildred, wreathed in her soft laces, shimmering in her gray poplin, and bending her stately head in salutation, extended a delicate hand, loaded down with quaint old Indian rings, to each, when the coffee was served.

"I will leave you now to the hatching of your famous conspiracy for the invasion of the Island of Jersey." The old gentlewoman passed smilingly through the door where the three knightly soldiers stood bowing low, and then the four conspirators sat down to arrange the dramatis persona of a little society play in "High Life," in which Professor Andrew Fraser was destined to be the central figure, and act without "lines" or rehearsal.

The "leading lady" was at the present moment dreaming of a golden future in her own rooms at the "Banker's Folly." Nadine Johnstone had been allowed to make her apartments as bright and cheery as her buoyant nature suggested.

For Andrew Fraser, after much discussion with Janet Fairbarn, had convoyed the heiress to St. Heliers for a day. The resources of all the local furnishers were taxed by the young prisoner's taste, and, the old executor, unbending a little, grimly vaunted his "dangerous liberality." "I'll be bail for the expenditure of five hundred pounds, as an extra allowance," he said. "Now make yourself snug here, for ye'll bide here the whole three years! As to the bookmen, music, and libraries, I'll give ye a free hand.

"The yearly allowance of yere lamented father will cover all yere dealings with mantua-makers and milliners. That is yere own affair—all that sort of womanly gear. We will make one day of it, and if ye are lacking aught, then Miss Janet can bring ye to town, or the dealers can come." It was, thus self-deluded, that Andrew Fraser noted the coming cheerfulness of his defiant young charge. He fancied he had provided every wish of her lonely heart. But the trailing lines of smoke of the daily Southampton packets only spoke to Nadine of a growing correspondence with Major Harry Hardwicke, Royal Engineers. She waited now for Simpson's arrival for news of the Delhi mystery—the death of the unloving parent, who had been only her jailer.

At Rosebank Villa, Major Hardwicke was busied with Captain Murray, while Anstruther drew Alixe Delavigne aside. "Listen to all Murray proposes, and agree to it. You may be astonished at our plans, but between you and I, alone, lies the deeper secret. My secret orders from the Viceroy are for your ear alone. Your life-quest to reach Nadine's side can only betaken up after Murray and Hardwicke have finished their little masquerade at the 'Banker's Folly.' Let this secret be ours, alone! Do you promise me, Alixe? I will aid you, heart, life, and soul!" And, with her eyes softly shining in a growing tenderness, Alixe Delavigne murmured: "I trust you in all things! It shall be as you wish."

Captain Anstruther then led the way to the library, and closing the doors with the minute attention of a true conspirator, cried: "Murray, we will hear from you first!" Seated, with her lips parted in an expectant smile, Alixe Delavigne listened in amazement as "Red Eric" proceeded.

"I got the little idea from Frank Halton, of the Globe. You may know that he was out at the Khyber Pass seven years ago, as the war correspondent of the Telegraph, and he ran over Cabul at the time of the Penj-Deh incident. He has prepared a series of varied skits and personal items covering the visit incognito of Prince Djiddin, a Thibetan noble of ancient and shadowy lineage. This 'Asiatic Lion' will be duly kept in the shadows of a mysterious seclusion in the Four Kingdoms until we introduce him to a small section of the British public.

"The Globe, the Indian Mail, the Mirror, the Colonial Gazette, and other periodicals will darkly hint at his itinerary, and he will be paraded judiciously, and no vulgar eye must ever rest upon him. These items will be widely copied. A graceful, social phantom, a Veiled, mysterious young potentate is Prince Djiddin!" "The humbug will be easily discovered!" said Anstruther, still at sea.

"Not if you flung your protecting mantle over him!" cried Murray. "We will shield him by a protecting Moonshee, who alone speaks his august master's language, a tongue not to be easily translated; in fact, perfectly proof against all prying outsiders. The one way to hoodwink old Fraser is to humbug him about the great work on Thibet. That is the one soft spot in the hide of this old alligator. We have gone carefully over the reports of your secret agent at St. Heliers. Make us square with him, Captain, let him have your orders to aid us, and he can get us first hooked on to this Yankee Professor Alaric Hobbs! We will jolly him a bit, and so, get an interview with old Fraser, and then fool the old chap to the top of his bent. We will supply him with theories enough to set every bee in his bonnet buzzing. Your man is already 'solid' with Professor Alaric Hobbs, who is a quaint genius, and withal, a hard-headed Yankee, but full of cranks and 'isms.'"

Anson Anstruther exchanged doubtful glances with Alixe Delavigne, who was still very agnostic. "The real object is to spy out the interior of Fraser's household without alarming him, and to locate his hidden treasure, and, moreover, to open a safe, personal communication with Nadine Johnstone. Letters and messages finally go astray. And, at the very first sign of danger, old Andrew would clear out to the Continent, shut up the girl, get rid of that insured package, and cut all future communications! In the long three years, the girl might die, be estranged from you, or perhaps fall into the hands of some foreign fortune hunter. Human nature—woman nature—is a mutable quantity. But once we are in communication we can provide for future correspondence in any event.

"And you, Anstruther, would be defeated in recovering the hidden property of the Crown. Moreover, these two Frasers are the only heirs-at-law.

"Who knows what might not be done for a million, when a beggarly fifty pounds will buy a death certificate in many a little continental town?" They were all gravely silent as Murray soberly clinched his argument. "It is idle not to believe that old Hugh Fraser Johnstone laid out his brother's whole future course! He certainly has trusted him with his stealings, the lost crown jewels! He trusts his child's whole future to the care of these two cold Scotsmen, and gives the heiress over to old Andrew, to keep her safe from Madame," Murray bowed, "his only living enemy, and from all the other relatives of his long-hated dead wife. From your own disclosures and Madame's own words, we must all fear that her first appearance would be the signal for the spiriting away of Nadine until the minority is at an end. And it might invite some secret crime. She bears the hated face of her dead mother, you say!"

"True," murmured Anstruther. "My solicitor tells me, too, that a guardianship by will is the very strongest tying-up of a rich young ward. We can follow on later, perhaps, if this opening could be made, but where have we a 'Prince Djiddin,' and where, the wonderful 'Moonshee?'"

"There is Prince Djiddin," laughed Captain Murray, pointing to Major Harry Hardwicke, "and here is the Moonshee," he tapped his own broad breast.

"I fail to understand you," slowly replied Anstruther, now blankly gazing at the two men in a growing wonderment.

"Nothing easier," briskly answered Murray. "I go quietly over to Jersey and spend a honeymoon week with Flossie. She is soldier enough to know that my little masquerade means full 'duty pay and traveling allowances.' I will hide her safely with my Jersey friends, and while Frank Halton works his secret Literary Bureau, I will steal over to Southampton and bring 'Prince Djiddin' over to St. Heliers. I will see that he naturally falls in with Prof. Alaric Hobbs, and then, 'fond of seclusion,' I will embower my 'Asiatic Lion' not a league from the 'Banker's Folly.' I will be near my Flossie, and I propose to bring 'Prince Djiddin' soon face to face with the heiress.

"As the Prince speaks not a word of English, even old Fraser will be disarmed. Neither Hobbs, Alaric of that ilk, nor Fraser have ever been in India, and we can easily fool them. Neither of us have ever been been in Jersey, and fortunately our figures, age, and complexions aid the makeup. I can do the Moonshee. It was my 'star' cast in many a garrison theatrical show. Remember, none of them have ever seen Hardwicke or myself—only Miss Nadine will know us."

"But," faltered Alixe Delavigne, "Captain Murray makes no provision for me. Must I be hidden here always?" Her voice was trembling with the surging love of her longing heart.

"Ah! dear Madame!" replied Murray. "Place aux dames. You can be later quietly escorted to St. Heliers. Old bookworm Fraser does not leave the 'Folly' once in six months. You shall, on to-morrow, arrange with Mrs. Flossie Murray to share 'those days of absence' with her, while I am playing the 'Moonshee' to 'Prince Djiddin's' leading part. With your own sly man-of-all-work, then how easy for the acute Jules Victor to lead you into the extensive grounds, where you may often meet Nadine Johnstone when all is safe. He has the friendly entree, and can hoodwink the attendants of the garden, while your own ingenuity will enable you to have stolen interviews in the splendid rambles of the 'Banker's Folly.' Old Andrew never quits his study, and all we have to do is to watch Miss Janet Fairbarn. Jules Victor can guard against a surprise by her."

"It is an ingenious plan, but, a dangerous one," mused Anstruther.

"Not so," boldly replied Murray. "Remember that old Fraser is crazy on his bookwork. Hobbs is his only male visitor. He has not a relative, a friend—no one to watch on the outside while we hold the old chap at bay. Miss Janet watches in the house." Anstruther had been carefully studying the two men's faces. "'Prince Djiddin' will be all right, with a little makeup, using walnut juice and a proper costume. His Indian brown is quite the thing. But you, my boy, must be an Eurasian, the son of a high English official and a native woman of rank. You were carried away to Thibet by your beautiful Cashmere mother when she was abandoned. The usual sad story will go. She, driven out by her family, refuges finally in Hlassa, and your English was, of course, learned before the death of your father, when you were eighteen. Your usefulness as interpreter caused you to attach yourself to 'Prince Djiddin's' noble family.

"Yes," said Hardwicke. "A couple of days spent in the British Museum, and with your fertile imagination, Eric, you will be enabled to describe the mysterious, lonely city on the Dzangstu, and even the gilded temples of Mount Botala. You can easily book up all about the Dalai Lama. Make a voyage a la Tom Moore to Cashmere!"

"Right you are!" laughed Eric Murray. "Frank Halton stole into the town of Hlassa and he now offers to me his sketchbooks and private notebooks. Foreigners from the south have occasionally been allowed to go into Thibet since the Nepauese were driven out, but only very rarely. I will have all the rig and quaint outlandish gear that Halton brought away. So you see we are the 'Ever Victorious Army.' Yes. Prince Djiddin will be a go." And the others were fain to agree in the plausibility of the scheme.

It was midnight when the quartette separated to meet at the quiet wedding of the morrow. Alixe Delavigne had finally approved the plan, when Anson Anstruther drew her away to confer upon the risk. "You see," he pleaded, "Murray will never even speak to Miss Johnstone. All that pleasing task is left to Prince Djiddin, who can and will, of course, choose any unguarded moment. Captain Murray will hold old Fraser personally in limbo, while you and Prince Djiddin can meet the pretty captive in alternation. At any danger signal, the Prince and Moonshee can quit Jersey at once." Then the lightning thought came to the lady: "She already loves him! It must be so! He is the only young officer who was ever allowed to enter the Marble House in that long year of golden bondage. It shall be so! I can trust to him for her sake, if he loves her for Love's own sake. I can remain near Nadine then, even if they have to disappear, for Jules will keep the pathway open." And yet, shamefaced in her own growing tenderness for her mentor, Anstruther, she took these wise counsels away to hide them in her own happy heart. "It will make us then, Captain Murray," she said, as she extended her hand in good night, "a little circle of five, gathered around this motherless and fatherless girl to save her from the secret schemes of tyrant and fortune hunter."

"Precisely so, Madame," laughed Murray, "when I have sworn in my beautiful recruit to-morrow. Then we will be five in very truth." There was a flying early morning visit to Hunt and Roskell's on the morrow, which greatly astonished Captain Anstruther, who had escorted Madame Alixe Delavigne down on her way to the pretty chapel at Kew, where Captain Murray duly "swore in his beautiful recruit," with bell, book, and candle. The parure of diamonds which the lady of Jitomir gave to Mrs. Flossie Murray caused even the eyes of "The Moonshee" to open in wonder at the little campaign breakfast of the leaders of this Crusade of Love. "Only suited to the wife of Prince Djiddin's High Chamberlain," laughed Alixe Delavigne, as the happy Captain departed on his honeymoon tour, escaping showers of rice, to "move upon the enemy's works in Jersey."

"Thank God that I have got that sharp-eyed Hawke safely out of town," cried Captain Anstruther to his beautiful confidante, as they escorted Miss Mildred back to beautiful Rosebank. The "lass o' Richmond Hill" was no fairer than the happy woman who had seen Major Hardwicke depart for a long conference with that all powerful sprite of the magic pen, Frank Halton, who was now busied in launching his creation, Prince Djiddin. "A single word at the 'F. O.' will legalize our useful myth, 'Prince Djiddin,' and I hope that Hardwicke and Murray will succeed. They can surely lose nothing by the attempt. I am known to be the Viceroy's aide-de-camp 'on leave,' a near kinsman, and I am sure that old Fraser would take alarm at the first visit or written communication from me. Once startled, he would soon be off to hide the jewels on the Continent, and then only laugh at our efforts. Of course he will swear that the insured packet only contained family papers or some of the estate's securities. Yes! Alan Hawke is the only man whom I fear now as to the safety of either the girl or the jewels. He seems to have had many old dealings with Hugh Johnstone, too!" They were silent as they threaded the beautiful Surrey garden lanes of the old burgh of Sheen. Loved by the bluff Harrys of the English throne, its beauties sung by poet and deputed by artist, the charming declivities of Richmond gained a new name from Henry VII, and its bosky shades once saw a kingly Edward, a Henry, and a mighty Elizabeth drop the scepter of Great Britain from the palsied hand of Death. Its little parish church to-day hides the ashes of the pensive pastoral poet Thomson, and the bones of the great actor Kean. But, Anstruther's active mind was only dwelling in the present, as Miss Mildred nodded in the carriage. He saw again the simple wedding of the morning, and heard once more those touching words "I, Eric, take thee, Florence." Then his eyes sought the face of Alixe Delavigne in a burning glance, which caused that lady to seek her own bower in Rosebank villa, and hide her blushes from "Him Who Would Not Be Denied." Miss Mildred smiled and nodded behind her fan, for she heard the Bells of the Future sounding afar off.

The graceful woman escorted Captain Anstruther to the river's edge that night, when he departed to a conference of moment with Hardwicke and Halton. She fled back, like the swift Camilla, to her own nest, as the Captain went forth upon the river. Only the listening flowers heard her startled answer when Anstruther had found a voice to tell the Pilgrim of Love his own story in a soldier's frank way. "Wait, Anson! Wait, till you know me better, till our quest is done; wait till the roses bloom here once more," she had whispered.

"And if I do wait, Alixe—if I ask you again?" Anstruther cried as he kissed her slender hand.

"Then you shall have my answer," she faltered, but her eyes shone like stars as she lightly fled away.

Captain Anson Anstruther had reckoned without his host when he rejoiced over Alan Hawke's departure. As the aide-de-camp sped down the darkened river, he still saw Alixe Delavigne's eyes gleaming down on him in every tender twinkling star, but the wily agent whom he had dispatched to the Continent four days before, was near him yet, and comfortably dining in a little snug public in the Tower Hamlets, on this very night. He was looking for tools suited to a dark game which busied his reckless heart.

Major Alan Hawke (temporary rank) had passed two days at Geneva in a serious conference with the sorrowing sisters Delande. His meeting with the softhearted Justine had brought the color back to the poor woman's face, and she shyly held up the diamond bracelet to his view, murmuring, "I have thought of you and kissed it every night and morning, for your sake, Alan!"

With a glance of veiled tenderness, the acute schemer took his fair dupe out upon the lake, while Euphrosyne directed the slow grinding of the mills of the gods. "I must lose no time," Hawke pleaded, "as I have to report for duty in London." And so, he gleaned the story of the hegira and the situation at the Banker's Folly. He heard all, and yet felt that there was a gap in the story. Justine was true to her plighted word.

He instinctively felt that Justine was holding back something of moment, and yet in his heart he felt that the price of that disclosure would be his formal betrothal to the loving Justine. But he dared not vow to marry, and the Swiss woman was loyally true to her oath. He remained "their loving brother" as yet, and when two days later, Alan Hawke departed for London direct, he mused vainly over the tangled problem until he reported to Captain Anson Anstruther. "If this greenhorn girl has any designs of her own she has not told them yet to Justine. I must get a man to help me to work my scheme, or go over to Jersey myself," he at last decided. He was secretly happy at Captain Anstruther's prompt injunctions to make ready for a tour of two months upon the Continent. "I shall have all your detailed instructions prepared tomorrow, Major Hawke," said the young aide-de-camp. "Meet me, therefore, at the Junior United Service at ten o'clock; you can take a couple of days to look over London, and then proceed at once to the delicate duty which I will give to you. And, remember, the Viceroy's orders are that you are to report to me alone, and also to preserve an absolute secrecy. Your future rank will depend upon your discretion." Major Alan Hawke was not as cheerful, however, when he opened his private mail at Morley's Hotel, as when he had bade adieu to Captain Anstruther. A formal communication from the Credit Lyonnais informed him that Monsieur le Professeur Andrew Fraser had formally forbidden Messrs. Glyn, Carr & Glyn to pay the four bills of exchange, acting in his capacity of executor of a will duly filed at Doctor's Commons, and that the four drafts must be proved as debts against the estate, and so paid later, in due process of law on proof of the claim. The refusal was due to the death of the drawer before presentment.

"Damn it! I must play a fine game now!" he glowered. "Anstruther I must obey in all! Once back in India with rank, however, I can force old Ram Lal to pay these drafts. He dare not resist—there's the rope for him!

"And I must find a fellow to spy out the situation in Jersey. I certainly dare not linger here!" He be-took himself to an old haunt in Tower Hamlets, where the first stars of the "swell mob" were wont to linger, a haunt where he had once taken refuge in his changeling days, years before.

A glance at a man seated enjoying a good cigar at a table caused his heart to leap up in joy. "Jack Blunt—of all men! By God! this is luck!" he cried. When the happy Alan Hawke tapped the smoker smartly on the shoulder he first laid a finger on his own lip and then hastily said: "Get a private room, Jack, I want you at once. I've a special bit of business in your line." Major Alan Hawke, Temporary Rank, unattached, hastily bade the boni-face serve the best supper available for two. "Mind you, no poison in the wine!" he sharply said.

"We've the best vintages of London Docks," grinned the happy host, as he sped away and left the two scoundrels alone.

"What are you doing now, Jack?" queried Hawke.

"Nothing," sullenly replied the middle-aged star of the swell mob. "My eyes! you are in great form," he admiringly commented.

"Can you leave town for a week or so, on a little job for me?" briskly continued the Major.

"Ready money?" said "Gentleman Jack" Blunt, stroking out a pair of glossy side whiskers.

"Yes, cash in plenty on hand, and lots more in sight," imperatively replied the Major.

"Do I work with you, or alone?" asked Blunt.

"It's a little private investigation," replied Hawke, "and as I have to leave town to-night, and spend a couple of months on the Continent, you are the very man. I am afraid to appear in the thing myself, as I am well known to the other parties, and so I fear being followed over the Channel. I'm back again in the army." Jack's eyes grew larger in a trice.

"Here comes the grub," gayly said Blunt. "You can trust the wine here. The crib is square, too. Now, my boy, fire away. We are alone, and no listeners here." Before Jack Blunt had put away a pint of best "beeswing" sherry, he was aware of all Alan Hawke's intentions. His keen brain was working all its "cylinders."

"Give me just five minutes to think it over, Governor," said the sparkling-eyed, dark-faced, swell cracksman. "I know Jersey like a book. I worked the 'summer racket' there once. The excursion boats, the farmers' races, the Casino balls, the Military games, and the whole lay. I think I can cook up a plan. You don't show up just yet. I am to do the 'downy cove.'"

"Not till I can double on my track, and you have piped the whole situation off," said Hawke. "The game is a queer one. I may want to come over later and show up and make a little society play on the girl. I may, however, join you and help you secretly, or I may have to stay away altogether. But I must act at once. There's money in it. If you have to make the running yourself, you can get your own help."

"And, you have the real stuff?" agnostically demanded Jack Blunt.

"What do you want for a starter as your pay for the report to be sent to me at the Hotel Faucon, Lausanne, Switzerland?" Hawke was eager and disposed to be liberal.

"Oh! A hundred sovs for the job, as you lay it out—and fifty for my little incidentals," laughed Jack Blunt. "Of course, if it goes on to anything serious, you'll have to put away the real 'boodle,' where I have something to run with, if I have to cut it. I might run up a dangerous plant!"

"Bah!" decisively said Hawke. "Only an old fool to dodge, who is over seventy—a dotard—and a foolish girl of eighteen—a simple boarding-school miss!"

"Yes, but she has a million, you say. There's always some one to love a girl with that money! Love comes in by the door, and the window, too, you know!"

"She has never been five minutes alone with a man in her life!" cried Hawke. "You are safe—dead sure safe!" Blunt's roving black eyes rested on Hawke's eager face as he laughed.

"And you want to marry her, to keep others from her, or run her off at the worst, you say? That's your little game."

"I will have either the girl, or those jewels! By God! I will! I've got money to work with, plenty of it—not here," cautiously said Hawke, "but there's your hundred and fifty. Do you stand in?"

"To the death—if you do the handsome thing, my boy!" said the handsome ruffian, pocketing the notes. "When do I start?"

"Take the midnight train to Southampton, and go at work at once. I fear they may send some damned spies over there! Now, what's your plan?" Major Hawke watched his old pal in a brown study.

Jack Blunt had smoked half his cigar, when he brought his white hand down with a whack. "I have it! A combination of gentleman artist and literary gent! 'The Mansion Homes of Jersey,' to illustrate a volume for the use of tourists—London and Southwestern Railway's enterprise. I'll sneak in and do the grand. You want a correct sketch and map of house and grounds, and the whole lay out?" Artist Blunt was delightfully interested in his Jersey tour now.

"Yes!" cried Alan Hawke, his eyes growing wolfish, and he leaned over to his companion and whispered for a few moments. "That's the trick, Governor," nodded Jack Blunt, "You work on the double event. And—I get my money—play or pay?"

"Yes. Put up in good notes—only you are not to bungle!"

"Do you think I would fool around with a 'previous conviction' against me? The next is a lifer, and I've got to use the knife or a barker, if I run up against trouble, for I'll never wear the Queen's jewelry again! I've sworn it!" The man's eyes were gleaming now like burning coals, "I'll do the grand, and then, take off my beard and change my garb! I look twenty years older in a stubble chin. I can watch them from the public at Rozel Pier. I used to do a neat little bit of cognac, silk, and cigar smuggling. I know every crag of Corbiere Rocks, every shady joint in St. Heliers, every nook of St. Aubin's Bay. Oh! I'm fly to the whole game!"

"Could you not get a good boat's crew there?" anxiously demanded Major Hawke.

"Ah! My boy! I am 'king high' with a set of daring fishermen, who can smell out every rock from Dover to Land's End; and, from Calais to Brest, in the blackest night of the channel, if it pays."

"Then, Jack, your fortune is made, if you stand in. We'll pull it off, in one way or the other. You've got an easy job for a man of your ability. I'll meet you at Granville! Now, get over to St. Heliers, and work the whole trick in your own way! Send me your secret address in Jersey at once to Hotel Faucon, Lausanne, and run over to the French coast at Granville and find a safe nest there for us. There we are within seventeen miles of each other, with two mails a day, and the telegraph. It's a wonderful plant, so it is."

"Yes, Governor! And old Etienne Garcia, at the 'Cor d'Abondance' in Granville, is the very slyest rogue in France. When you find a Crapaud who is dead to rights, he is always an out and outer. I'll square you with my old pal, Etienne, who slyly makes 'floaters' and then gets the government cash reward for towing them in. He has always a half dozen pretty girls hanging around there, and many a good looking stranger has ended his 'tour' by a sudden drop through the flow of the drinking room over the wharf where Etienne keeps his 'boats to let.'"

"How does he do it?" mused Alan Hawke. "It's a risky game in France."

Jack Blunt laughed.

"A few puffs of smoke in a cognac glass, and the subject is knocked out for an hour after drinking from the nicotine-filmed crystal, bless you," laughed Blunt, "there's never a mark on Etienne's victims. He is too fine for that, only cases of plain, simple, 'accidental drowning.'

"You may as well address me as 'Joseph Smith, Jersey Arms, Rozel Pier, Jersey.' I am solid with Mrs. Floyd, the landlady there," said the scoundrel mobsman, anxious to spend some of his cash.

"All right, then, Jack! Go ahead!" cheerfully cried Major Hawke. "Don't overgo my instructions a single hair! I'll either join you in the grand stroke, or else meet you at Granville and there tell you what to do. Remember that I'll settle all your Jersey bills, and I will send a post order for ten pounds extra to you at the 'Jersey Arms,' to give you a local standing with the postman.

"That you can spend on the underlings around the Banker's Folly, but beware of an old body servant named Simpson—an old red-coat who may turn up any day now from India! He was Johnstone's own man, and he hates me, at heart, I know! Now, if you can do the 'artist act,' you must find out where the old man keeps his stuff! I don't know yet whether we want him first or the girl; or to crack the whole crib! If we ever do, then, Simpson must get the—" Hawke grimly smiled, as he drew his hand across his throat! "I must be off!" he hastily said as he noted the time.

On his way over to Folkestone, Major Alan Hawke mused over his great coup, as he lay at ease, wrapped up in a traveling rug, and now resplendent in a fur-trimmed top coat, befrogged and laced, which indicated the officer en retraite.

"I will first do up Holland, Belgium, and Denmark, and take a little preliminary look around Paris," mused the Major, studying a list of the missing jewels which Captain Anstruther had artfully arranged. Sundry deductions and additions, with an admirable disorder in the items (judiciously divided and reclassified) served to guard against any old confidences exchanged between Ram Lal and his secret friend Hawke. The real list in the original was now in the private pocket-book of the Viceroy.

"Each of our Consuls at the cities you are to visit has this list," said Anstruther to the Major, "and you can vary your travel as you choose, but visit all these jewel marts, and report to the local Consuls. If they have further orders for you, you will get them there, at first hands. Should you find that any of the jewels have been offered for sale, simply report the facts to the local Consul, and write under seal to me at the Junior United Service, then go on and examine further at once! You are to take no steps whatever to recover them, or to alarm the thieves! All your expenses and your pay will be advanced by me!" The acute schemer decided not to risk any suspicions by marketing his own jewels. "They might bounce me for the murder," fearfully mused the Major. "I could show no honest title through Ram Lal. They might arrest him, and I need him to pay the protested drafts—later, when I go back on the Viceroy's staff!" He smiled and wove his webs like a spider in his den.

On his arrival in Paris, from a run to the Low Countries, a week later, Major Alan Hawke betook himself at once to No. 9 Rue Berlioz. And there Marie Victor greeted him, handing him a letter which was dated from Jitomir, Volhynia. "How is your mistress?" he affably demanded.

"She is well, and will remain for several months longer in Russia!" politely answered Marie, bowing him out.

"By God, then, she has given up the chase! I see it all!" mused Hawke, as he pored over the letter on his way to the Hotel Binda. "The trump card she wished to play was to blast the old fellow's hopes of a baronetcy. Death has struck down her prey, and, she will now wait till the girl is free! She is too sly to face old Fraser; his brother has warned him. But she says she will need me in the winter, on her return."

The deceived scoundrel laughed. "The coast is left clear for me now! I'll telegraph to Joseph Smith, run on to Geneva, deposit my own jewels there, in the agency of the Credit Lyonnais, and then return the notifications of protest of the Bills of Exchange to Ram Lal.

"I wonder if I can steal those jewels, get my Major's rank as a reward from the Viceroy, and marry the girl? It would be the luck of a life!" he dreamed.

Two days later, on the terraces of Lausanne, he laughed over Jack Blunt's cheeky campaign.

"The 'artist dodge' worked to a charm," wrote Jack. "I used the Kodak, and I have a dozen good views of the house, and as many more of the grounds. My chapter on the 'Artistic Homes of Jersey,' will be a full one! I soon jollied a couple of the London maid servants into my confidence. By the way, send me, at once, another 'tenner' for expense, and some money for my own regular bills. I can make great play on the two frolicsome maids. They are up for a lark. The shy bird keeps her rooms; and there really seems to be no young man around. Devilish strange! A room is being got ready for the old body servant who is now on his way from India. He might fall over Rozel cliff some night, when half seas over! That's a natural ending for him! Maps, sketches, and all will be ready for you at the place we agreed. It's all lying ready to our hand, and ten minutes of a dark night is all I want. The old chap is always mooning alone in his study, till the midnight hours, over his books, and he has the whole ground floor to himself. The men are in the gardener's house, ten rods away, and all the women sleep upstairs. He sees no one but a half crazy Yankee professor, who drops in of a morning. But, the shy bird keeps in her cage, and lives in great state, upstairs. More when you send the money."

On his way to say adieu to Justine, before departing to Vienna, Alan Hawke smiled grimly. "I can strike now, when I will, and as I will! But, first to race around a little, and then, having fulfilled my mission, to get a couple of weeks' furlough, to go about my own affairs. The coast is clear. Jack Blunt's plan is right. Simpson must be first put out of the way. He would fight like a rat on general principles."

At Rosebank Villa, Madame Alixe Delavigne was nightly busied now in official conferences with Major Harry Hardwicke, who had lingered in the concealment of Anstruther's home. The Captain found abundant time to prosecute his "official business" with his lovely aid in the secret service. And he had learned all of Alixe Delavigne's lessons now, save to acquire the patience to wait. But a growing album of newspaper clippings was daily augmented by Frank Hatton's artfully disseminated items regarding "Prince Djiddin of Thibet," the first visitor of rank from that land of shadows. The warring journals who wrangled over the rich young visitor's "stern retirement" from all public intrusion referred to the political coup de main to be looked for in "the near future." From various parts of the United Kingdom, the mysterious princely visitor's trail was daily telegraphed, and a hearty laugh from all three of the conspirators of Rosebank Villa greeted the final article in the St. Heliers Messenger, stating that a learned Moonshee or Pundit, "the only Asiatic attendant of Prince Djiddin of Thibet" was arranging for a brief visit of a descendant of the Dalai-Lamas.

Anstruther and Hardwicke laughed merrily at Frank Halton's last graceful touches. "A romantic gratitude to a retired British officer, who had once befriended the Prince's august father, was the one impelling cause of a visit, in which the strictest retirement would be guarded by the dweller on the Roof of the World," etc., etc. So read out Madame Delavigne, closing with the remark that the "Moonshee had already visited the Royal Victoria Hotel at St. Heliers to arrange for the coming of his friend, and to the regret of the authorities, the Prince would decline all the hospitality due to his exalted rank."

"Captain Murray must be even now at work," anxiously said the fair reader.

"We will hear at once," said Anstruther. "Prince Djiddin, you must now materialize! For Murray's letter tells me that he is already in full communication with Jules Victor at the Hotel Bellevue. So the 'Moonshee' has one faithful friend near at hand. If there is any shadowing of either of you, Jules Victor is an invincible avant garde. He knows the faces of all the dramatis persona. You see, Douglas Fraser is gone to India and old Andrew has never seen any of our 'star actors.' We are absolutely safe!"