"Not a bad morning's work! For she will never tell our little secret! And she will surely come again! She may be my salvation here! Madame Louison, I now debit you just thirty pounds!" laughed Major Alan Hawke, as he deftly blew a kiss in the direction of Allahabad.

"You shall pay for this bracelet, and much more! You shall pay for all! And I'll set this soft-hearted Swiss woman on to watch you, and you shall pay her well, too! Now, for my old friend, Hugh Johnstone!" He waited in a most happy frame of mind till his carriage bore him to the club for an elaborate Anglo-Indian toilet.
There was a crowd of eager gossips secretly tracking him who watched him roll away in state to the marble house.
"By Jove! I believe that he is the coming man!" said old Captain Verner.
"I wonder if this handsome young beggar is really going in for the Veiled Rose of Delhi.

Just his damned luck!" And then the loungers left the club window and drank deeply confusion to the would-be wooer's stratagems.
All unconscious of their busy curiosity, the gallant Major Alan Hawke calmly descended at the marble house, with a secret oath now registered to ignore the very existence of Nadine Johnstone, "The old man is always harping on his daughter," he mused.

"I must throw this old beggar off his guard thoroughly to-day, once and for all.

He must never think that I, too, am 'harping on his daughter.' "But only let me get to the core of this old secret of the jewels, and I will find a way to frighten the baronet-to-be until he opens his miserly old heart." And so the wary guest sought his old friend's presence.