“The way to India is before you, but five hundred pounds is not a fortune for Major Alan Hawke! Listen! I watched you carefully yesterday, in your vigil upon Rousseau’s Island. Your telltale face betrayed you. You were left stranded here in Geneva. An accident has brought us together. You cannot divine my motives. I can fathom yours easily. Tell me now, of yourself, of your past in India--of your present standing there. If you are frank, I may contribute to your fortune; if not--our ways part here!” “And, if I warn Anson Anstruther that you are a mere adventuress, if I notify my old friend Hugh Fraser (soon to be Sir Hugh Johnstone), then your little game will be spoiled, Madame Louison!” defiantly said Hawke. The woman leaned back and laughed merrily in his face. “You are like all professional lady killers, a mere fool in the hands of the first woman of wit. I dare you to cross my path! I will then join Captain the Honorable Anson Anstruther, in Paris, at the Hotel Binda! I will also see that you are excluded from every club in India! Your occupation will be gone, my Knight of Ecarte. Anstruther waits for me.” She tossed him a card. “See for yourself. He was kind enough at breakfast, and, he will help me, if I ask him.” “And why do you not fly to his arms?” sneered Alan Hawke, who had quickly resigned the bullying tone of his abordage. “Because he is a nice boy and a gentleman,” the woman said, with a cutting emphasis. “Now, let me read you, Monsieur le Major, a lesson in manners. Never be rough with a woman! That is the road which always leads on to failure. I wish you a good appetite for your breakfast, which I have delayed, and for which I beg your pardon!” She rose and swept along with her Juno strides, and had reached the second Hall of Antiquities before Alan Hawke overtook her. It had flashed across his mind that he had for once in his life met a woman who was not afraid of the future, whatever had been her past. A single malicious letter from Anstruther would ruin him in India, for there was an ominous cloud, no bigger than a man’s hand, lingering in that hiatus between his old rank of Lieutenant of Bengal Artillery, and the shadowy tenure of his self-dubbed Majority. This Aspasia hid none of her methods. She had boldly captivated the passing Pericles, and, evidently, she was the desired one. “Let me explain,” he began, as the woman looked calmly into his face. “We are only losing time, Major,” Madame Louison remarked, as she sought a corner. “I see that you have already repented. Do you know any one in Geneva?” “Not one of the seventy-five thousand here,” frankly answered Hawke. “The only man I came here to see, the English Consul, is away on leave.”