the heart, threw her arms around the neck of
her startled companion.

"I am so unhappy here--so wretched, this is but a gleaning white stone
prison, Justine! I stifle in this wretched land! Why did my father bring
me here to die by inches?" There was no pretense in her stormy sobs.

"We are soon going home, Darling!" cried the affrighted Swiss. "Just
now your father told me that we were all to leave India forever, and at
once." And so, gently soothing the unhappy girl, orphaned in her
heart, Justine Delande escaped to the first essay of her life in high
decorative art. "There is some strange mystery of the past in all this!
He has a heart of flint, this old tyrant!" murmured Justine, as with
fingers trembling in haste she completed a toilet, which later caused
even old Hugh Johnstone to growl "By Gad! This Swiss woman's not half
bad looking!" A last pang, caused by the keen secret sorrow of not
daring to wear her diamond bracelet, was effaced by the rising tide
of indignation in Justine Delande's awakened heart. There were strange
emotional currents fitfully thrilling through her usually placid veins
as she stole a last glance at herself in the mirror. "A tyrant to the
daughter. I warrant that in the old days he broke the mother's heart! He
never mentions her! Not a picture is here--nothing--not even a memento,
not a reference to the woman who gave him this lovely child! Her life,
her death, even her resting place, are all wrapped in the selfish and
brutal silence of a selfish tyrant! He should have been only a drill
sergeant to knock about the half-crazed brutes who stagger under a
soldier's pack over these burning plains!" It suddenly occurred to her
that in some mysterious way Major Alan Hawke's coming would contribute
to the rescue of the captive Princess.

Justine Delande really loved her beautiful charge with all the fond
attachment of a mature woman for the one rose blossoming in her lonely
heart. Their gray passionless lives had run on together since Nadine's
childhood, as brooks quietly mingle, seeking the unknown sea! She now
felt the wine of life stirring within her, and, seizing upon another
justification for her dangerous secret association with Alan Hawke, she
murmured: "I will tell him of all this. He has high influence with
the Home Government. This Captain Anstruther on the Viceroy's staff is
certainly his firm friend. We must leave here and return to dear old
Switzerland. Perhaps the Major himself kn