"Waiting orders," he said, with the sad, sweet smile of one enjoying a sinecure.

His swelling outward port thoroughly proved that the days were gone when he was to be scanned before the morning salutation.

Les eaux sout basses, the impecunious Frenchman mourns, but there was a swelling tide bearing Alan Hawke onward now.
A hearty welcoming letter from the ci-devant Hugh Fraser was a good omen, for rumor of a thousand tongues had already invested the returning Major with an important secret mission.

His epistolary seed planted in Delhi had brought forth fruit as rapidly as the magic of the Indian conjuror's mango-tree trick.

It was already rumored even in Allahabad that "Hawke had dropped upon a decidedly good thing." The Major was busied, however, in analyzing the motives of Alixe Delavigne, in her change of name, her separate journey, her choice of the Calcutta route, and the inner nature of her projected enterprise.
"A woman in her position, easy as to fortune, will stoop to none of the arts of the blackmailer; she could choose a life of soft luxury, for she is yet in the bloom of vigorous early womanhood.