"The grass is damp yet." Captain Hardwicke's argus eyes, love inspired, were now daily fixed on the marble house.

He scoured Delhi and amassed a pyramid of detached fragmentary gossip in all his alarm, but one star of hope cheered him.

Though Major Hawke was known as the only cavalier of Madame Louison, save the old nabob, now supposed to be ill at home; though Hawke drove out for a week with the lovely countess--to the great surprise of the local society, the handsome renegade had never once been seen in public with Miss Nadine Johnstone.

Stranger still, the star-eyed Madame Berthe Louison had never accompanied the young heiress in the regular afternoon parade en voiture.

"There's a mystery here," mused the lover.