dent in the long
communication. A single glance at her tell-tale mirror reassured her,
and she blushed, as she murmured:

"He believes me younger than I am!" But her brow was grave as she
revolved the situation. "There will be a long struggle, a fight of love
against craft and and greed! Who will win?" The fact that the Government
Secret Service had already traced the delivery of the heavily insured
shipment, "ex. Str. Lord Roberts," to Professor Andrew Fraser, was
a first victory for the enemy! "If the old nabob wrote directly via
Brindisi to his brother, then the acute old Scotch Professor may be
on his guard now! And--the will?--the will? What does it provide for
Nadine's future? If he had already taken the alarm-then I may have yet
to fight my way to my darling's side! The black curtain of the past
shall never be lifted by my hand unless--unless Andrew Fraser forces
me to strike hard at his dead brother's paper card house of honorable
deeds!"

As Madame Louison watched the rich moonlight silvering the broken
wake of the channel steamer, she pondered over the telegrams. "Major
Hardwicke and Alan Hawke are both en route to London, charged with
different missions. And I am to beware of Hawke. They have only sent him
away, perhaps, to veil the official game of the Indian authorities. And
Alan Hawke truthfully warns me of his coming by private dispatch. Is he
trying to regain his lost status? Douglas Fraser, the second executor,
on his way back to India. He has passed Brindisi already. Ah! The
sorrows for the dead are quickly assuaged when the 'property interests'
furnish a fat picking to solicitors and the holders of dead men's gear.

"Nadine is only eighteen--she has three years to remain under legal
tutelage. Perhaps Andrew Fraser may have been already coached upon his
course by his unrelenting kinsman. And there is a fortune waiting for
father and son in the perquisites." Madame Louison fell asleep in a vain
quandary as to the precise age when men ceased to value wealth and to
sell their souls for gold. That question was still undecided when the
steamer Sparrow Hawk sped into Dover harbor.

The beautiful wanderer was now clearly resolved as to her future
treatment of Alan Hawke. "My foe dead, the theater of war is transferred
to Great Britain. He is not necessary to my own campaign, but, in
watching him, I may be able to shield Nadine from his crafty plots. If
he should try to secretly make friends with the Frase