appearance of the musician. An aristocratic pallor
refined his face, he was neatly booted and gloved, the elegant lines of
the Pole's supple figure were displayed in a morning frock coat, and his
chapeau de soie was virginal in its gloss.

"Some of my own twenty pounds," mused Alan Hawke, as he gayly sprang
out and saluted his dupe. "Ah! There you are. You look to-day the old
Casimir. Let us have a few last words before the boat arrives."

Hardened as he was, Alan Hawke was surprised at the childlike lightness
of the Pole's manner when they encountered the fresh young beauties who
were already the cynosure of all eyes upon the morning boat. The
storm of emotion had spent itself, and while Alan Hawke squired, the
aggressive Miss Genie, Casimir Wieniawski was bending over the slightly
dreamy and more romantic Miss Phenie! They distributed themselves in
open order, as they strolled along toward the drawbridge of that most
hospitable of old horrors, Chillon Castle.

It was a day of days, and the artful Hawke laughed as he smoked his
cigar upon a rustic bench in the castle Garden. Miss Genie was at his
side, pouting, petulant, provokingly pretty and duly agnostic as to the
Polish prince.

A week later, Alan Hawke stood on the deck of the Sepoy, as that
reliable vessel steamed out of Brindisi harbor for Bombay. He was
watching a lace handkerchief, waved by a graceful woman, standing alone
upon the pier. The adventurer drew a silver rupee from his pocket, and
then gayly tossed it into the waves, crying, "Here's for luck!" as he
watched the slender, distant, womanly figure move up the pier. There lay
the Empress of India with steam now curling from her stacks, ready to
follow on to Calcutta. "I have not broken her lines yet," murmured Major
Hawke as he paced the deck, "but I have her pretty well surrounded,
cunning as she is!" and so he complacently ordered his first bottle of
pale ale.

CHAPTER IV. THE VEILED ROSEBUD OF DELHI

The October winds were whirling the pine needles down the mountain
defiles in the bracing Alpine autumn, as Alan Hawke sped on past Suez,
gliding on through the stifling furnace heat of the Red Sea, past Mocha,
and dashing along through the Bridge of Tears, to Aden. He left at Suez,
and also at the Eastern Gibraltar of haughty Albion, the brief letters
for his mysterious employer, and he mentally arranged the social gambit
of his reappearance at Delhi in the nine days before the Sepoy ste