h Johnstone is alive, for I could
sell her out to him. No one else cares. They must both live to be
our bankers. Now tell me, why did either or both of them go to
Calcutta--what for?" Ram Lal figuratively washed his hands in invisible
water.

"Running water, passing silently, leaves no story behind, Sahib," he
said, simply. "We have not caught our eels yet. But they are both coming
back into our eel pot." And as the days dragged on Alan Hawke beguiled
the time with the most energetic inroads into Justine Delande's heart.

"Some one must break the line of the enemy," darkly mused Alan Hawke, as
in the unrestrained intimacy of their long, morning rides, he influenced
the Swiss woman's heart, love-tortured, to a greater passionate
surrender.

"It maybe all in all to me, in my secret career, your future fidelity,"
he pleaded. '"It will be all in all to you, and to your sister. There
will be your home, the friendship of an enormously rich woman! The girl
will have a million pounds! And you and I, Justine, shall not be cast
off, as one throws away an old sandal." The cowering woman clung closer
daily to the man who now molded her will to his own.

The absence of Johnstone and Madame Louison seemed confirmation of the
rumors of coming bridals.

"They will come back, as man and wife!" growled old Verner, to Captain
Hardwicke, "and then, look out for a second bridal! Hawke and the
heiress!" But Harry Hardwicke only smiled and bided his time. His daily
morning ride led him to the double gateway, to at least nearby the
isolation of the lovely Rose who was filling his heart with all beauty
and brightness.

Major Alan Hawke had withdrawn himself into a stately solitude at the
Club. His evenings were spent with Ram Lal, and his mornings with the
deluded Justine, who dared not now write to the calm-faced preceptress
in Geneva how far the tide of love had swept her on. In the long
afternoons, Major Hawke was apparently busied with the "dispatches"
which duly mystified the Club quid mines, as they were ostentatiously
displayed in the letter-box. No one but Ram Lal knew of the abstraction
from the mail, and destruction of these carefully sealed envelopes of
blank paper. But the thieving mail clerk in their secret pay, laughed as
he consigned them later to the flames.

The astute Major was not aware that he was being daily watched by secret
agents representing both the absent ones whom he desired to dupe. But a
daily letter was d