“Ah!” the agitated girl cried with blushing cheeks, “Mrs. Willoughby told me how he dragged his wounded friend out of a storm of Afghan balls, and gave her back the child of her heart. It was General Willoughby who got him his Victoria Cross. And, she says that he is a hero, he is so gentle and manly--so gifted--a man destined to be a commanding general yet.” The guilty Swiss woman dared not raise her eyes to watch the fleeting blushes on Nadine’s cheeks. “It is time, high time we leave India,” she mused, and then, the thought of separation from Alan Hawke chilled her blood. “Let us go in,” she said. “The grass is damp yet.” Captain Hardwicke’s argus eyes, love inspired, were now daily fixed on the marble house. He scoured Delhi and amassed a pyramid of detached fragmentary gossip in all his alarm, but one star of hope cheered him. Though Major Hawke was known as the only cavalier of Madame Louison, save the old nabob, now supposed to be ill at home; though Hawke drove out for a week with the lovely countess--to the great surprise of the local society, the handsome renegade had never once been seen in public with Miss Nadine Johnstone. Stranger still, the star-eyed Madame Berthe Louison had never accompanied the young heiress in the regular afternoon parade en voiture. “There’s a mystery here,” mused the lover. “Old Hugh and the Major appear daily with the Frenchwoman, but Nadine Johnstone has never been seen alone with anyone save her father, or this Swiss duenna. Hawke is making slow progress there, if any.” Meeting old Simpson, the nabob’s butler, Captain Hardwicke tipped him with a five-pound note. The old retired soldier grinned and opened his confidence. “The Major! Bless your stars!” gabbled Simpson, “She’s a straightaway angel, and not for the likes of him! Major Hawke has a dark spot or two in his record--away back!” grumbled Simpson, “No, Captain! Major Hawke has never set eyes on her for a single moment, but the one night of that dinner. By the way, it is the only one we ever gave!” The butler swelled up proudly. “That night she never lifted her eyes, nor spoke even a word to him. He comes to see the Guv’nor on business, an’ mighty private business it is. They’re locked up together often.” “And, this marrying? The stories are now told everywhere?” queried Hardwicke, blushing, but desperately remembering that “all is fair in love and war.” He, an incipient Major, a V. C.--“pumping” an old private soldier.