n to point a moral and adorn a tale.

While the anxious Viceroy was busied at Calcutta, and General Willoughby
and Hawke were engrossed with the pompous funeral preparations at Delhi,
the ladies of the whole station unanimously condemned the departed. For
a cold and brutal foe of womanhood had died unhonored in their midst,
and none were left to mourn.

With much pretentious wagging of shapely heads, and much mysterious
innuendo, they spoke lightly of the departed one, and failed not to
mentally unroof the Silver Bungalow. The baffled ladies scented a social
mystery!

Wild rumors of splendid orgies, strange tales of a wronged woman's
vengeance, lurid romances of the flight of the French Countess with a
younger lover, after despoiling her aged admirer; all these things were
"put in commission" and vigorously circulated.

The principal party interested in these slanders, was, however, now
calmly gliding on toward Aden, while the dead millionaire was alike
oblivious to the lovely daughter whom he had crushed as a bruised
flower, the haughty woman who had defied him in his wrath, and the
administration of the million sterling which was the golden monument
over his yawning grave! The silk-petticoat Council of Notables in Delhi
decided by a tidal-wave of womanly intuition, that the gallant and
debonnair Major Alan Hawke would marry "the lovely and accomplished
heiress," and so the white-bosomed beauties of the capital of Oude
turned again lazily to their respective sins of omission and commission,
and to the glitter of their respective booths in Vanity Fair!

The club gossips waited in vain for the reappearance of Major Alan
Hawke, whose entire personal effects were bundled hastily away to the
marble house, where the adventurer now ruled pro tempore. It was late
in the night when Major Hawke had achieved all the preparations for the
funeral of the murdered man, upon the following day. Simpson and a squad
of non-commissioned officers watched where the flickering lights gleamed
down upon the dead nabob.

Making his last rounds for the night, Major Hawke, with a soldier's
cynical calmness, enjoyed a cheroot upon the veranda, as he bade his
captain of the guard take charge until his return. The Major had most
carefully examined the five bills of exchange which now occupied his
attention, and his mind was now busied with the dead man's golden store.
He now contemplated a visit to a man whose conscience bothered him not,
but