d adroitly atoned for his mauvais debut by a
respectful demeanor, which was not feigned. He answered the running fire
of questions which had led him from Cape Comorin to the Himalayas, and
from Chittagong to the Khyber Pass.

"You are sure that no one in Geneva knows your face?" Berthe Louison
asked at last.

"I have been here only two days, and it is twenty years since I first
roved over Switzerland on schoolboy leave," was the truthful answer.

"Then I can use you if you will decide to aid me, after you have heard
me. I know, already, all that young Anstruther knows of the whole
Johnstone matter. I do not intend to meet him at Paris," she demurely
said. "I am absolutely untrammeled in this world. I am free to act as
a woman's moods sway her. I have plenty of money, a fact which lifts me
above the degradation of man's chase, and I indulge in no illusions.
I am a soldier's daughter, and my dead father was the son of one of
Napoleon's heroes of La Grande Armee. My whole life has been most
unconventional; and I am free to dispose of myself, body and soul, and
will, but for one thing." She was pleased with Alan Hawke's mute glance
of inquiry. "Only the business which brought me to Geneva! We are all
the slaves of circumstance! The veriest fools of fortune! I do not blame
you for your surmises! I had vainly sought, for two years, the very
information which I gained last night by chance at a Geneva table
d'hote. It was from Anstruther that I discovered the changed name under
which Hugh Fraser's daughter has been hidden from me for years. For
I owe this all to chance, to Anstruther's susceptibility, and to my
playing the risqu'e part which you saw fit me so well." The woman's eyes
were now flashing ominously.

"But you led me on--you deceived me!" stammered Alan Hawke.

"I had nothing to risk!" the resolute beauty replied. "My name is not
Berthe Louison, as you may well imagine! As for the little amourette
de voyage, I will leave the laurels to your handsome young friend and
yourself. I do not play with boys, and, as for you, I should always
guard myself against you!

"Now, I will be practical! I know Europe; I do not know India! I need
a man brave, cool, and unscrupulous; I need a resolute man to aid me in
the one purpose of my life! I wish to go out to India to face this
Hugh Fraser, to lift up the curtain of the dead past, and I need a
protector--a paid champion--a man who values the only thing which is
concrete pow