mystery of Delhi. Popularly supposed to be the old
boy's daughter, and his sole heiress, Miss Nadine," concluded the young
aid-de-camp. "The old curmudgeon keeps her judiciously veiled from
mortal ken. No man but General Willoughby has ever exchanged a word with
her. The dear old boy--his memory does not go back beyond his last B.
and S.--he can't even sketch her beauty in words. And she is as hazy,
even to the Madam-General--our secret commanding officer. There is a
continuous affront to society in this old monomaniac's treatment of that
girl."

"You would like to storm the Castle Perilous, and awaken the Sleeping
Beauty?" archly said Hawke, as they rolled along under a huge alley of
banyan trees.

"Not at all," gravely said Hardwicke. "She is only a girl, like other
girls, I presume; but, this old fool is only fit for the old days,
when the kings of Oude flew kites and hunted with the cheetah; or,
half drunken, dozed, lolling away their lives in these marble-screened
zenanas, with the automatic beauties of the seraglio. Our English cannon
have knocked all that nonsense silly. Here is a high-spirited, Christian
English girl, shut up like a slave. It's only the unfairness of the
thing that strikes me." Hawke eyed the blue-eyed, rosy young fellow of
twenty-six with an evident interest. Stalwart and symmetrical in figure,
Hardwicke's frank, manly face glowed in indignation.

"You've won your spurs quickly out here," said Hawke. "You have not
been long enough in India to case-harden into the cursed egotism of this
hard-hearted land, and remember, age, crawling on, has indurated old
'Fraser-Johnstone.' He was never an amiable character. What do the
ladies of the city say of this strange social situation? I never knew
that the old beast had a daughter till to-day."

Captain Hardwicke wearily replied: "They all hold aloof, of course,
after some very rough rebuffs, as I believe the old boy will clear out
for good when he gets his baronetcy. It's possible that the girl is
half a foreigner after all," mused Hardwicke. "The duenna is surely a
continental."

"Yes; but she seems to be a very nice person. I was there to-day at
tiffin," finally said Major Hawke,

"She had very little to say, and cleared out at once. I did not see Miss
Johnstone." They fell into an easy, rattling chronicle of things past
and present, and before the two hours' ride was over, the astute Major
felt that he had divined General Willoughby's object