Major Alan Hawke closed the door, and laughed softly as he threw himself into a chair. “They are all the same!” he mused. “Not a bad morning’s work! For she will never tell our little secret! And she will surely come again! She may be my salvation here! Madame Louison, I now debit you just thirty pounds!” laughed Major Alan Hawke, as he deftly blew a kiss in the direction of Allahabad. “You shall pay for this bracelet, and much more! You shall pay for all! And I’ll set this soft-hearted Swiss woman on to watch you, and you shall pay her well, too! Now, for my old friend, Hugh Johnstone!” He waited in a most happy frame of mind till his carriage bore him to the club for an elaborate Anglo-Indian toilet. There was a crowd of eager gossips secretly tracking him who watched him roll away in state to the marble house. “By Jove! I believe that he is the coming man!” said old Captain Verner. “I wonder if this handsome young beggar is really going in for the Veiled Rose of Delhi. Just his damned luck!” And then the loungers left the club window and drank deeply confusion to the would-be wooer’s stratagems. All unconscious of their busy curiosity, the gallant Major Alan Hawke calmly descended at the marble house, with a secret oath now registered to ignore the very existence of Nadine Johnstone, “The old man is always harping on his daughter,” he mused. “I must throw this old beggar off his guard thoroughly to-day, once and for all. He must never think that I, too, am ‘harping on his daughter.’ “But only let me get to the core of this old secret of the jewels, and I will find a way to frighten the baronet-to-be until he opens his miserly old heart.” And so the wary guest sought his old friend’s presence. When Major Alan Hawke’s neat trap drew up before the marble house there was an officious crowd of Hindu underlings in waiting to welcome the expected guest. Casting his eyes around the wide hall gleaming with its superb trophies of priceless arms, with a quick glance at the crowd of sable retainers, Major Hawke realized in all the barren splendors of the first story the absence of any womanly hand. As he followed the obsequious house butler into a vast reception room, he murmured: “A diplomatic tiffin, I will warrant! The old fox is sly.” He wandered idly about the Commissioner’s sanctum, admiring the precious loot of years, displayed with an artfully artless confusion. On the walls, a series of beautiful Highland scenes recalled the Land o’ Lakes. Pausing before a sketch of a stern old Scottish keep of the moyen age, Major Alan Hawke softly sneered: “Oatmeal Castle! The family stronghold of the old line of the Sandy Johnstone’s, nee Fraser.” And, picking up the last number of the Anglo-Indian Times, he then affected a composure which he was far from feeling.