Within the dreaming shades of the gardens hiding the Silver Bungalow, there was no sign of clamor. The beautiful little jewel-box of a mansion was apparently deserted, but a duel to the death was going on within the great white parlor where Hugh Johnstone stood raging at bay. He leaped up in a mad outburst of passion, when Alixe Delavigne cuttingly broke the silence. The old nabob knew that the desperate woman in her reckless mood feared nothing.-- “You have lied to me! You have tricked me! You have sent that girl away to Europe to hide her forever from me! I kept my pact, and, you deliberately lied!” She stood before him like an avenging fury, quivering in a passion which appalled him. But secure in his skillfuly executed maneuver, he reached for his hat and stick. “I defy you! I have no answer to your abuse! Draw off your fighting cur, Major Hawke, or I’ll grind you and him in the dust!” The old man was frantic under the insult. He moved toward the door. “Stop! You go to your ruin!” cried the irate woman. “Will you give me full access to your daughter?” “Never! My Lady! Go and lord it over your whipped hounds in Poland--hide in your estates the price of the double shame of two most accommodating Frenchwomen!” “By the God who made me” she hissed, “I will bar your Baronetcy forever! I will find out that girl, and she shall learn to love me and despise your hated name and memory! It is open war now! and,--mark you--liar and hound, these two generals, the Viceroy, and, all India shall soon know what I know!” Then, with a clang of her silver bell, she called Jules Victor to her side. “Jules,” she said, “If this person ever crosses the threshold of my door again, shoot him like the dog he is!” And then the black-browed Frenchman, holding open the door, hissed “ALLEZ!” as Hugh Johnstone saw for the last time the marble face of the woman who had doomed him to shame. “Go and send Ram Lal to me at once!” sternly said Berthe Louison. “Then to Major Hawke. Tell him that I want him to dine with me, and I shall need him all the evening. Order my carriage for five o’clock!” Alan Hawke had played his best trump card, and played it well, for the woman who had doubted him, gloried in his courage and hardihood. “I can trust him now!” she murmured when she drove to the Delhi agency of Grindlays and, two hours later, astounded the local manager by the executive rapidity of her varied business actions. “What’s in the wind?” murmured the bank manager. “A sudden flitting!” He had been ordered to detail two of his best men to accompany Madame Louison to Calcutta, in a special car leaving at midnight. “Telegraph to your head office in Calcutta of my arrival. Major Alan Hawke will represent me here, under written orders to be left with your Calcutta manager. Send this on in cipher.” She handed him a long dispatch to his chief.