He was growing sadly wise.

He had lately mused over the old motto, "Lucky at cards--unlucky in love!" The cool provision of the funds at Lausanne by Berthe Louison, her separate route to Delhi, her business-like coldness in their strangely frank relations, all these things proved to him that he was to be only an intelligent tool; not a trusted friend in the little drama about to open at the old capital of Oude.
Alan Hawke had already abandoned the idea of any sentimental advances upon Alixe Delavigne.

"Strange, strange," he murmured; "a woman can sometimes easily be flattered into a second conjugation of the verb 'To Love,' but an internal previous evidence of man's unreliability can do that which no personal sorrow can effect.

The key to this woman's behavior is in the story of her sister's shadowed life.
"The hiatus from Hugh Fraser to Pierre Troubetskoi covers the tragedy of Valerie Delavigae's life, the death blow was then struck, and the central figure is the child.

So, with the strangely acquired fortune at her beck and call, Alixe Delavigne has consecrated herself to that most illogical of human careers--a woman's silent vengeance! That achieved, will the furnace fires of her stormy heart be lit by the hand of passion ?" He ruminated sagely over these matters as he sped on over the Great Indian Peninsula Railway.