“That Hardwicke is an uncommonly fine young fellow.” So decided the Major as he splashed into his morning tub. There was one man, however, in Delhi who now viewed Hawke’s presence with a secret alarm, amounting to dismay. It was the stern old miserly Scotsman who had paced his floor half the night in a vain effort to reassure himself. “What does he know? I must have old Ram Lal watch him,” mused Hugh Johnstone. “I was a fool not to have cleared out from here months ago, before these spies were set upon me. First, Anstruther; now this fellow, Hawke, and, perhaps, even Hardwicke. If it were not for the old matter I would go to-morrow, and let the Baronetcy go hang--or find me in the Highlands. But, I must make one last attempt to get them out. I must--” and the old man slept the weary sleep of utter exhaustion. Before the nabob awoke, Captain Henry Hardwicke, swinging away on his morning gallop, had reviewed the strange attitude of Major Hawke. “He is very intimate with Hugh Johnstone, and he is a man of the world, too. I will yet see this charming child, when the ban of her prison seclusion is lifted.” He vaguely remembered the one timid and girlish glance of the beautiful dark eyes, when he had been presented, pro-forma, to the Veiled Rose upon that one memorable state visit. He then rode out of his way to gaze at the exterior of the great marble house, and was rewarded by the sight of a graceful woman walking there under her governess’s escort in the dewy freshness of the early morn. He doffed his helmet as Miss Justine paused among the flowers, and then Miss Nadine Johnstone looked up to see the graceful rider disappear behind the fringing trees. “That was Captain Hardwicke, was it not?” asked the lonely girl. Miss Justine was busied in dreaming of her meeting of the morrow. “Yes, it was,” she absently replied. “They tell me that he nobly risked his life to save his wounded friend,” dreamily continued Nadine. “He gave back to a father the life of an only son at the risk of his own. How brave--how noble.” And Justine gazed at her charge in surprise, as the beautiful Nadine bent her head to greet her sister flowers. The resolute Major Hawke, at his cheerful breakfast, was busied with thoughts of the coming arrival of Hugh Johnstone’s secret foe. “I must have money from her at once to swing Ram Lal’s Private Inquiry Bureau and to mystify these quid nuncs here. For I must entertain the clubmen a bit. It’s as well to begin, also, to pot down a bit of her money for the future. She shall pay her way, as she goes.” And, with a view to the further cementing of his rising social pyramid, he planned a very neat little dinner of half a dozen of the most available men whom he had selected as being “in the swim.” “The next thing is to discover what the devil she really wants of old Johnstone! She must show her hand now, and then soon call on me for help.”