But to Alan Hawke all this Indian life was now a second nature. The scenes of Bombay recalled his once ambitious youth, the days when he first delightedly gazed upon the wonders of Elephanta, and the gloomy grottoes of Salcette. From his very landing he had set himself one cardinal rule of conduct, to absolutely ignore all the lighter attractions of native and Eurasian beauty, and to let no single word fall from his lips respecting the sudden occultation of Miss Nadine Johnstone--this new planet softly swimming in the evening skies of Delhi. He felt that he was beginning a new career, one in which neither greed nor passion must betray him. It was the “third call” of Fortune, and he had wisely decided upon a golden silence. “If I had only met the favored Justine, instead of that withered Aspasia, Euphrosyne, then, the girl’s heart might have been easily made mine,” was the unavailing regret of the handsome Major. “If I could have come out with them,” he sighed. He well knew the softening effect upon romantic womanhood of a long sea voyage where the willing winds sway the softer emotions of the breast, and the trembling woman is defenseless against the perfidious darts of Cupid. “My time will come,” he murmured as the train rushed along through the incense breathing plantations. A richer nature than foggy England was spread out before him in treacherous Hindostan with its warring tribes, its dying creeds, its dead languages, its history sweeping far back into the mists of the unknown. For every problem of the human mind, every throe of the restless heart of man is worn old and threadbare in Hindostan, with its very dust compounded of the wind-blown ashes of dead millions upon millions. Gross vulgar Gold reigns now as King on the broad savannas where spice plantations and indigo farms vary the cotton, rice, and sugar fields. Wasted treasures of dead dynasties gleam out in the ornamentation of the temples abandoned to the prowling beast of prey. And riches and ruin meet the eye in a strange medley. Dead greatness and the prosaic present. Modern bungalows, where the faltering conqueror watches the tax-ridden ryots dot the landscape, and an overweighted official system brings its haughty military, its self-sufficient civilians, its proud womanhood, to drain the exhausted heart of India. And the ryot groans under many taskmasters. Lingering with a restless heart, in Allahabad, Alan Hawke roused himself as at a bugle call, when he received a telegram announcing the safe arrival of the Empress of India at Calcutta. “La danse va commencer,” he muttered, as he read the brief words of his employer: “Go on to Delhi, await me there. Telegrams to you there at private address. Leave letters.” The signature “Lausanne” was a new spur to his well-considered prudence. And, so, the next day, Major Hawke sedately descended at Delhi.