Club and mess bandied the freest tattle as to old Hugh Johnstone's lovely "importation." Men eyed the prosperous Major Alan Hawke on his rising pathway with a growing envy.

There was a smart coterie who now firmly believed that the Major's only "secret business" was to marry the Rose of Delhi, and then, departing on an extended honeymoon, leave the "Diamond Nabob," as the ci-devant Hugh Fraser was called, free to proclaim Madame Berthe Louison, queen of the marble house, and sharer of his expected dignity, the crown of his life, the long-coveted Baronetcy.

When old Major Verner growled: "That's the scheme, Hardwicke! My Lady of France makes the condition that the young heiress shall be settled first.

Gad! What a lucky dog Hawke is!" Then, Harry Hardwicke suddenly discovered that he loved the moonlight beauty of his dreams--the fair veiled Rose of Delhi.

Hawke rose up as a darkly menacing cloud on his future.
His morning rides were now but keen inspections of the Commissioner's garden, and, lingering on the Chandnee Chouk, he knew, by experiments, conducted with a beating heart, just where Justine Delande was wont to wander in the lonely labyrinth, with her lovely young charge.