-be until he opens his miserly
old heart." And so the wary guest sought his old friend's presence. When
Major Alan Hawke's neat trap drew up before the marble house there
was an officious crowd of Hindu underlings in waiting to welcome the
expected guest.

Casting his eyes around the wide hall gleaming with its superb trophies
of priceless arms, with a quick glance at the crowd of sable retainers,
Major Hawke realized in all the barren splendors of the first story the
absence of any womanly hand. As he followed the obsequious house butler
into a vast reception room, he murmured:

"A diplomatic tiffin, I will warrant! The old fox is sly." He wandered
idly about the Commissioner's sanctum, admiring the precious loot of
years, displayed with an artfully artless confusion. On the walls, a
series of beautiful Highland scenes recalled the Land o' Lakes. Pausing
before a sketch of a stern old Scottish keep of the moyen age, Major
Alan Hawke softly sneered: "Oatmeal Castle! The family stronghold of the
old line of the Sandy Johnstone's, nee Fraser." And, picking up the last
number of the Anglo-Indian Times, he then affected a composure which he
was far from feeling.

"Damn this sly Scotsman! Why does he not show up?" was the chafing
soliloquy of the Major, now anxious to seal his re-entree into Delhi
society with the open friendship of the most powerful European civilian
within the battered walls of the wicked city. He needed all his
nerve now, for Hugh Fraser Johnstone was a past master of the arts of
dissimulation.

In fact, the mauvais quart d'heure was really due to the innate womanly
weakness of Mademoiselle Justine Delande. This guileless Swiss maiden
had been carried off her feet by the romantic episode of the morning.
Her cool palm still tingled with the meaning pressure of the handsome
Major's hand! She had hastened away to her own apartment, as a wounded
tigress seeks its cave for a last stand! The concealment of the diamond
bracelet was a matter of necessity, and, with a beating heart, she
buried it deep under the poor harvest of paltry Delhi trinkets which she
had already gathered, with a mere magpie acquisitiveness.

Alan Hawke had builded better than he knew, when he selected this same
bauble. He had been guided by a chance remark of Ram Lal's. "Give her
that," said the crafty old jeweler. "She has priced it a dozen times
since her first coming here." It was the Ultima Thule of personal
decoration to her. Th