se are the
results of the easy luxury of an enervating high-life. All these
social habits are weakening elements. Now, fortunately, your wife has a
singularly strong vital nature. You may safely dismiss all your fears.
Madame will be entirely herself in the morning."

"Can I be of any service?" demanded the genial host, secretly urged on
by a coterie of curious, womanly sympathizers in silk and muslin.

"I am the trustee of Madame Louison, in some important business matters,
and not her husband," gravely remarked the Major. "I only came up here
to confer with her upon some matters of moment." Both the listeners
bowed in silence.

"Then, my dear sir, you can be perfectly reassured," the physician
briskly concluded, tendering his card. "My professional conscience
will not allow me to make even a single future visit, as doctor, to the
charming Madame Louison. Should Madame awake in other than her normal
health and spirits, I should be professionally at fault."

Major Hawke then led the doctor aside and pressed a five-pound note
upon him. "Madame is of a wonderfully strong constitution. An heiress of
nature's choicest favors," the happy Galen floridly said, as he took his
leave.

"So she is," grimly assented Hawke.

The gossipy boniface was already spreading such meager details of the
sudden seizure as he had been able to pick up, and, the words "Polish
noblewoman," "Italian marchesa," "French countess," were tossed
about freely in the light froth of the conversation in the ladies'
drawing-room.

Meanwhile, Alan Hawke was smoking a meditative cigar alone, while pacing
the old Cantonal high road before the Faucon. "I think I will remain on
picket here," he mused. "This fiddler fellow, Wieniawski, must not meet
her. She must be led on to leave here at once. Constitution, nerve,
aplomb; she has them all. She should have been born a man. What a
soldier! One of nature's mistakes--man's mental organization, woman's
soft, flooding emotions, and beauty's fiery passions."

"I must pump Casimir. He will be safely nailed to the platform by his
duties, from eight to ten. I will not leave her a moment, however, till
he has the baton in his hand. I will then watch him until ten--meet him
down there, and, if he meets her after we separate for the night, he is
a smarter Pole than I take him for. And now I must go and frighten her
away from here."

Major Hawke was quick to note all the outer indications of man's varying
fortunes