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 Frasers, and to return to India, to aid the nephew, he might assist in robbing Valerie’s child of this mountain of miserably gotten wealth. “Thank God, I can make her rich. But Captain Anstruther will know the Viceroy’s whole mind, and I can trust to him.” But her cheeks were rosy red and her dancing dark eyes dropped in a sudden confusion, as the handsome aid-de-camp leaped aboard the steamer at Dover Pier. “I did not expect you!” she murmured. “I knew, of course, from your dispatch when you would arrive, and so I came down to further the Viceroy’s business!” the soldier said in a sudden confusion. In an hour, the two who had met in such strange manner at Geneva were seated alone in a first-class compartment, and were merrily whirling on to Lud’s town. Captain Anstruther’s ten shillings to the guard secured them from annoying intrusion. In another compartment, Jules and Marie Victor sagely exchanged their lightning glances of Parisian acuteness. “C’est un homme magnifique!” murmured Marie, and Jules gravely nodded, “Peut-etre, notre maitresse l’a connu longtemps. II est tres tendre!” The staff-officer “furthered the Viceroy’s business” by clasping both of Alixe Delavigne’s prettily-gloved hands. Her bosom heaved in a soft alarm, but she repulsed him not. “Why did you deceive me at Geneva?” he eagerly demanded, with a trembling voice. And Alixe Delavigne’s eyes were downcast and dreamy, as she whispered: