“You have promised to stand by me, Harry,” replied his friend. “See me married to-morrow, then a week’s honeymoon at Jersey is all that I ask! I can bestow my wife there with a dear friend, who has the prettiest old Norman chateau-maison on the island, and after that be near you there at Rozel Bay to work up the final discomfiture of this old vampire. I only claim the attendance of the whole party at my wedding, then I will disappear and spy out the ground for you long before you are ready to astonish the dreamy old bookworm. I have made my own plans, and Flossie has agreed to our runaway trip ‘in the interests of the service’! She is a soldier’s daughter, remember!” Miss Mildred, wreathed in her soft laces, shimmering in her gray poplin, and bending her stately head in salutation, extended a delicate hand, loaded down with quaint old Indian rings, to each, when the coffee was served. “I will leave you now to the hatching of your famous conspiracy for the invasion of the Island of Jersey.” The old gentlewoman passed smilingly through the door where the three knightly soldiers stood bowing low, and then the four conspirators sat down to arrange the dramatis persona of a little society play in “High Life,” in which Professor Andrew Fraser was destined to be the central figure, and act without “lines” or rehearsal. The “leading lady” was at the present moment dreaming of a golden future in her own rooms at the “Banker’s Folly.” Nadine Johnstone had been allowed to make her apartments as bright and cheery as her buoyant nature suggested. For Andrew Fraser, after much discussion with Janet Fairbarn, had convoyed the heiress to St. Heliers for a day. The resources of all the local furnishers were taxed by the young prisoner’s taste, and, the old executor, unbending a little, grimly vaunted his “dangerous liberality.” “I’ll be bail for the expenditure of five hundred pounds, as an extra allowance,” he said. “Now make yourself snug here, for ye’ll bide here the whole three years! As to the bookmen, music, and libraries, I’ll give ye a free hand. “The yearly allowance of yere lamented father will cover all yere dealings with mantua-makers and milliners. That is yere own affair--all that sort of womanly gear. We will make one day of it, and if ye are lacking aught, then Miss Janet can bring ye to town, or the dealers can come.” It was, thus self-deluded, that Andrew Fraser noted the coming cheerfulness of his defiant young charge. He fancied he had provided every wish of her lonely heart. But the trailing lines of smoke of the daily Southampton packets only spoke to Nadine of a growing correspondence with Major Harry Hardwicke, Royal Engineers. She waited now for Simpson’s arrival for news of the Delhi mystery--the death of the unloving parent, who had been only her jailer.