When Major Alan Hawke's neat trap drew up before the marble house there was an officious crowd of Hindu underlings in waiting to welcome the expected guest.
Casting his eyes around the wide hall gleaming with its superb trophies of priceless arms, with a quick glance at the crowd of sable retainers, Major Hawke realized in all the barren splendors of the first story the absence of any womanly hand.

As he followed the obsequious house butler into a vast reception room, he murmured: "A diplomatic tiffin, I will warrant! The old fox is sly." He wandered idly about the Commissioner's sanctum, admiring the precious loot of years, displayed with an artfully artless confusion.

On the walls, a series of beautiful Highland scenes recalled the Land o' Lakes.

Pausing before a sketch of a stern old Scottish keep of the moyen age, Major Alan Hawke softly sneered: "Oatmeal Castle! The family stronghold of the old line of the Sandy Johnstone's, nee Fraser." And, picking up the last number of the Anglo-Indian Times, he then affected a composure which he was far from feeling.
"Damn this sly Scotsman! Why does he not show up ?" was the chafing soliloquy of the Major, now anxious to seal his re-entree into Delhi society with the open friendship of the most powerful European civilian within the battered walls of the wicked city.

He needed all his nerve now, for Hugh Fraser Johnstone was a past master of the arts of dissimulation.
In fact, the mauvais quart d'heure was really due to the innate womanly weakness of Mademoiselle Justine Delande.