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Updated: June 16, 2025
Major Hawke found the tete e tete dinner with Hugh Johnstone a mere dull social parade. There was no demure face at the feast slyly regarding him, for while the two watchful secret foes exchanged old reminiscence and newer gossip, Justine Delande was cheering the lonely girl, whose silent mutiny as to her shining prison life now reached almost an open revolt.
Justine Delande really loved her beautiful charge with all the fond attachment of a mature woman for the one rose blossoming in her lonely heart. Their gray passionless lives had run on together since Nadine's childhood, as brooks quietly mingle, seeking the unknown sea!
The Viceroy has cabled that Ram Lal Singh has paid over twenty thousand pounds, to be held for Justine Delande, to whom Alan Hawke left all his dearly bought bribes; and also the money he left hidden at Granville jewels and notes to the value of ten thousand pounds more.
Justine Delande unwound the girl's arms from round her neck, while honest tears trembled in her eyes. The low cry: "My mother! My darling mother! He never even breathes the name!" had loosened all the tide of repressed feeling long pent up in Justine Delande's heart. "Trust to me! You shall know all, dearest! I am sure that Euphrosyne knows, and we shall see her soon!"
Without a word, Justine Delande led the startled girl into the house. "You are to see your uncle at once! After our breakfast! And I will be with you." faltered Justine, with an averted face. The orphaned girl was now dimly conscious of some impending blow.
His farewell to Miss Delande impressed that thrifty dame with the golden fortunes which had descended upon her sister. "Should you return to India, Major," she sibillated, "I will give you a confidential letter to Justine, for I know there is no one more fitted to remain in charge of sweet Nadine than my dear sister!"
Alan Hawke dreamed not of the sorrows of the restless heart beating in that virginal bosom. He paced the veranda of the Club gravely preoccupied till the midnight hour. Long before that, Justine Delande had sought her rooms in a feeble flutter of excitement over the harmless assignation of the morrow.
Before night the crafty Calcutta lawyer had notified Professor Andrew Fraser, in the far-away island of Jersey, and before Major Hawke himself received the Viceroy's orders, through General Willoughby, Mademoiselle Euphrosyne Delande, of Geneva, and the household at No. 9 Rue Berlioz, Paris, both knew that the defiant old nabob had sailed the dark sea without a shore.
"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. "There is some strange mystery of the past in all this!
But the "devil for luck" did not know of a little scene at Brindisi, where the blushing Nadine Johnstone hid her face in her friend's bosom. "It is my life, my very existence, Justine!" she pleaded. "I will never forget you; we are both women, and my heart will break if you refuse!" And thus Justine Delande had learned at last of Nadine's easy victory over the frank-hearted cousin's prudence.
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