oached her carriage,
sun helmet in hand. She scented treachery now! There were a dozen
brilliant young officers longingly gazing at this sweet apparition in
the gloomy gardens. Even General Abercromby strutted out and displayed
himself in the foreground, as Johnstone leaned over and gravely
whispered to the pale-faced beauty:

"My daughter has been sent away from the city for her health! Her
absence is indefinite. I will see you when General Abercromby leaves
here in a week, and explain all. No, not before. It is impossible."

With a sudden motion of her hand to Jules, Alixe Delavigne leaned back,
half fainting, upon her cushions. Her agitated heart was now beating in
a wild tumult of rage and baffled hatred! "Home!" she cried, and then,
as the marble house was lost to view, she harshly cried: "To Ram Lal's
first! To the jewel store!"

There was a brooding death in her eyes when she sternly said to the
merchant: "Send him to me at once! Send Hawke! Go! Waste not a moment!"

And then she swore an oath of vengeance, which would have made Hugh
Fraser Johnstone shudder, as he sat drinking champagne cup with his
guest. "One for you, my lady!" he had laughed, grimly, as the woman
whom he had tricked drove swiftly away. And the grim fates laughed too,
spinning at a shortening life web.

Major Alan Hawke was interrupted in his cosy nest at the Club by the
hasty advent of Ram Lal. The old jeweler had for once abandoned all his
Oriental calm, and he trembled as he muttered. "She demands you at once.
I brought my own carriage. Go to her quickly. There will be a great
monsoon of quarrel now. But her face looks as if she was stricken to
the death, and something will come of all this. You must watch like the
crouching cheetah!"

"What has happened?" anxiously cried Hawke.

"She has just found out the women are gone! She went up to the marble
house this afternoon, and saw the old Sahib Johnstone. He did not even
bid her to leave her carriage. One of my men ran over at once and told
me. She drove to the shop on her way homeward and sent me here." The
black Son of Plutus scuttled away, as if in a mortal fear. "I do not
dare to face her--in her angry mood," was Ram's last word. He was only
accustomed to baby-faced Hindu women of the "langorous lily" type, who
hung on his every word--the mute slaves of his jaded passions. "This one
is a tigress!" he sighed, as he fled from the Club.

"Ah! My lady is a bit rattled," mused Hawke as