secretly busied with plans for
a huge bribe to Ram Lal which should buy him to the doing of a dark deed
without a name. Only Berthe's determined attack on the granting of the
baronetcy in London, and her own "lightning disappearance" had saved
her from Ram Lal's cupidity. Master of the secrets of a dozen Eastern
poisons, the artful confederate of her dark retinue in the silver
bungalow, Ram Lal would have gladly worked Hugh Johnstone's will for his
red gold. But the fierce quarrel and the precipitate flight of Berthe
Louison had balked Johnstone, who fell by the very hand of the sly
wretch whom he had designed to buy, as the murderer of another. The
engineer hoist by his own petard. But, steadfastly looking to Valerie's
child alone, she knew not the dangers which she had escaped.

"I was afraid they would kill you, Madame. Thank God, we are now safe at
sea!" said Jules Victor.

"Who?" cried the startled woman.

"Why, that old wretch; he had money, and his spies were all around you,"
said Jules.

"Yes! Thank God! We are safe now!" mused Berthe Louison, and she bade a
long adieu to the strange scenes of her pilgrimage. "I shall never
see India again!" she reflected, when she passed, in a mental review,
Calcutta, holy Benares, smoky Patna, brisk Allahabad, Cawnpore, where
the white-winged angel broods over the innocent dead, heroic Lucknow,
and crime-haunted Delhi--all these rose up in a weird panorama of the
mind. Strange tales of wild adventure told by Alan Hawke returned to her
now--the mysteries of Thibet, the weird ferocity of Bhotan, the quaint
tales of the polyandrous Todas, and the strange story of Vijaynagar, the
desecrated city whose streets are peopled but ten days in the year! A
lotos land where crime broods, where the cobra hides under the painted
blossoms of Death!

Glittering palaces of Agra, gloomy caves of Elephanta, the light and
lovely Mohammedan architecture, the dark haunts of Kali and Bowanee,
the thronged Ghats of the sacred rivers, the color medleys of the vast
cities, all these busied her as she passed her days alone in study over
the secretly gathered up collection of polychrome views which had taken
her from the Neilgherries to Cape Comorin. Her dreams of all her subtle
plans to counteract all of Johnstone's schemes, her tender intrigues to
silently entrap Nadine Johnstone's girlish heart, her carefully plotted
line of future action, all of these things vanished in a moment, at
Aden, when a