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"Let it be a secret sign between us, an omen of brighter days for all of us. Stand by me and I will stand by you to the last. We will all meet happily yet by the beautiful shores of Lake Leman!" In half an hour, Justine Delande was completely at her ease, for well the artful renegade knew how to circle around the dangerous subject nearest his heart the secret history of Nadine Johnstone's mother.
The smooth adventurer had written: "If I have the future pleasure of meeting Mademoiselle Justine Delande I only hope to find a resemblance to her charming and distinguished sister. As my movements are necessarily secret, pray write only in the utmost confidence to Mademoiselle Justine. I hope to soon return and enjoy once more the hospitalities of your intellectual circle."
"Will Justine be true to her oath?" she faltered, as she drifted into the blessed release of dreamland. As the night wore on, Justine Delande, tossing on her bed in the Royal Victoria Hotel, waited for the dawn, to sail for Granville. She had telegraphed in curt words her dismissal, and she burned to reach Geneva, for to her the sight of Alan Hawke's face was the one oasis in her desert of sorrow.
And as to Major Hawke and this Madame Louison I've the Guv'nor's own orders they are never to see Miss Nadine. That is, Hawke not at all, and the lady only when Miss Delande is present! Them's my solid orders, and the old Guv'nor put my eye out with a ten-pound note the first I ever got from him. No, Captain!
General Wragge and the authorities have softened the blow to Justine Delande, whom he would have made his dupe. You must only know this, darling, from me from me, alone! And so, to shield poor, faithful Justine, we will all leave Jersey at once. Strange irony of fate.
The address given for India was "Bombay Club." Miss Euphrosyne gazed up at the stony lineaments of Professor Delande, her marble-browed and flinty-hearted sire, locked in the cold chill of a steel engraving. He was as neutral as the busts of Buffon, Cuvier, Laplace, Humboldt, and Pestalozzi, which coldly furnished forth her sanctum. She thought of the eloquent eyed young Major and sadly sighed.
She whispered, "He will come!" Madame Alixe Delavigne sat alone in her snug apartment of the Hotel Croix d'Or, at Granville-sur-Mer, four days after Justine Delande had been driven forth from the Banker's Folly! The perusal of a long letter from Jules Victor was interrupted by the arrival of a telegram from that rising young soldier, Captain Anson Anstruther.
"I'll warrant the old hunks has Bramah locks and Chubb's burglar proofs to fence this beauty off!" growled the Major, as he sank back in the carriage. "I fancy, though, that a liberal dose of Madame Louison's gold, judiciously administered by me, in her interest, to Justine Delande, may open the way to the girl's presence! The mother's story may serve to win the girl's heart.
He had dropped easily into the wooing and confidential intimacy which lulled Justine Delande into a fool's paradise of happy content. She was sinking away and now losing her will and identity in his own, without one warning qualm of conscience. For Alan Hawke's dearly bought knowledge of womankind now stood him in great stead.
Hawke observed the stony glare with which Johnstone whispered a few words of command to Justine Delande, when the two men sought the smoking-room. The door was hardly closed upon them when the coffee and cigars were served, when Johnstone, striding forward, locked the door.
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