It was the work of a moment for her to fulfill her simple task as messenger, and this done, she burned to hide herself in her own coign of vantage, for certain new-born ideas of personal decoration were crystallizing in her excited brain.

For the first time in her life, she would be fair to man's views; so as to justify the partner of her momentous secret in the complimentary remarks which, even now, made her ears tingle in delight.
"Do you know aught of this Major Hawke who comes to-day ?" wearily, said the listless girl.

"Some one of these red-faced old relics of my father's early life, I suppose!" The Rose of Delhi was gazing wistfully out upon the wilderness of beauty in the tangled gardens, sweeping far out to where the high stone wall shut off the glare and flying dust of the Chandnee Chouk.
"Certainly not, Nadine!" softly said the governess.

"This is only a peopled wilderness to me!" Her heart smote her as the girl, with a sudden lonely sinking of the heart, threw her arms around the neck of her startled companion.
"I am so unhappy here--so wretched, this is but a gleaning white stone prison, Justine! I stifle in this wretched land! Why did my father bring me here to die by inches ?" There was no pretense in her stormy sobs.
"We are soon going home, Darling!" cried the affrighted Swiss.

"Just now your father told me that we were all to leave India forever, and at once." And so, gently soothing the unhappy girl, orphaned in her heart, Justine Delande escaped to the first essay of her life in high decorative art.