amed
into the island-dotted bay of Bombay.

Sternly shunning, on his arrival, the local sirens, whose songs of old
fell so sweetly upon his ear, the determined Major sped away at once
for Allahabad. He was on shaking social quagmires at Bombay. There were
sundry little threads of the past still left hanging out in the shape of
stray urban indebtedness, and he now scorned to throw away a single one
of the crisp Bank of England notes showered upon him by Fortune. He was
growing sadly wise. He had lately mused over the old motto, "Lucky at
cards--unlucky in love!" The cool provision of the funds at Lausanne by
Berthe Louison, her separate route to Delhi, her business-like coldness
in their strangely frank relations, all these things proved to him
that he was to be only an intelligent tool; not a trusted friend in the
little drama about to open at the old capital of Oude.

Alan Hawke had already abandoned the idea of any sentimental advances
upon Alixe Delavigne. "Strange, strange," he murmured; "a woman can
sometimes easily be flattered into a second conjugation of the verb 'To
Love,' but an internal previous evidence of man's unreliability can
do that which no personal sorrow can effect. The key to this woman's
behavior is in the story of her sister's shadowed life.

"The hiatus from Hugh Fraser to Pierre Troubetskoi covers the tragedy
of Valerie Delavigae's life, the death blow was then struck, and the
central figure is the child. So, with the strangely acquired fortune at
her beck and call, Alixe Delavigne has consecrated herself to that most
illogical of human careers--a woman's silent vengeance! That achieved,
will the furnace fires of her stormy heart be lit by the hand of
passion?"

He ruminated sagely over these matters as he sped on over the Great
Indian Peninsula Railway. The western Ghauts were now far behind him
and their dark basalt crags. Bombay, Hyderabad, Berar, the Central
Provinces, Central India, and the southern prong of Oude was reached. He
was, however, no whit the wiser when he reached the Ganges and hastily
sought the telegraph station at Allahabad. But he felt like a prince in
the direct line of succession with his net eight hundred pounds still to
the good. His first care was to telegraph to Madame Berthe Louison,
to the care of Grindley, at Calcutta: "Waiting at Allahabad for your
letters, and news of your safe arrival." While rushing past the Vindhia
Mountains he had encountered several of h