rd away the blow;
but only an unslaked vengeance would point the shaft! The reproduction
of her sister's face seemed to touch her to her very bosom's core.
There is some fixed purpose in this cold-hearted woman's coming! Not
a lingering annoyance, but some coup de main, a bolt to be launched at
Hugh Johnstone alone!"

"I do not know how I can break her lines, unless she shows me some weak
point," he mused. "But either her fortune or Johnstone's shall yield me
a heavy passing toll. And, there is always the girl! There, I would have
to meet Berthe Louison as a determined enemy!" In recognizing the fact
that his employer must make the game at last, that she must lead out
and so uncover herself, he saw his own masterly position between the two
prospective foes.

"I can play them off the one against each other, at the right time, and,
if they fight each other, with the help of Justine Delande, I may even
make a strong running for the girl. I think I now see a way!" He felt
that his wandering days were over. The dark days of carking cares,
of harassing duns, of frequent changes of base, driven onward by the
rolling ball of gossip and innuendo.

He felt strangely lifted up in the familiar scenes of his years of
wanderings. For he was at home again. Alixe Delavigne, however carefully
watched for her eastern adventure, was socially helpless in a land of
strange alien races, of discordant Babel tongues, of shifting scenes, a
land as unreal as the visions of a summer night.

But to Alan Hawke all this Indian life was now a second nature. The
scenes of Bombay recalled his once ambitious youth, the days when he
first delightedly gazed upon the wonders of Elephanta, and the gloomy
grottoes of Salcette. From his very landing he had set himself
one cardinal rule of conduct, to absolutely ignore all the lighter
attractions of native and Eurasian beauty, and to let no single word
fall from his lips respecting the sudden occultation of Miss Nadine
Johnstone--this new planet softly swimming in the evening skies of
Delhi. He felt that he was beginning a new career, one in which neither
greed nor passion must betray him. It was the "third call" of Fortune,
and he had wisely decided upon a golden silence. "If I had only met the
favored Justine, instead of that withered Aspasia, Euphrosyne, then,
the girl's heart might have been easily made mine," was the unavailing
regret of the handsome Major. "If I could have come out with them," he
si