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If next day he had taken a walk with Mr Hawke, and heard what he had to say on the other side, he would have been just as much struck, and as ready to fling off what Pryer had told him, as he now was to throw aside all he had ever heard from anyone except Pryer; but there was no Mr Hawke at hand, so Pryer had everything his own way.
"I fail to recall the name, Johnstone Johnstone," murmured Hawke. "Why, everyone knows old Johnstone; he is an old mutiny man. You surely do! He was Hugh Fraser until he took the name of Johnstone, ten years or so ago, on a Scotch relative leaving him a handsome Highland estate!" There was a warning rustle at Hawke's left, as the fair stranger prepared for her flitting.
Stranger still, the star-eyed Madame Berthe Louison had never accompanied the young heiress in the regular afternoon parade en voiture. "There's a mystery here," mused the lover. "Old Hugh and the Major appear daily with the Frenchwoman, but Nadine Johnstone has never been seen alone with anyone save her father, or this Swiss duenna. Hawke is making slow progress there, if any."
The Major blushingly accepted the honor, and directed the letter to be sent at once to Morley's Hotel, for, as he mysteriously whispered, "The Foreign office may send me back to India in fact, I may be telegraphed for at any moment, and your sister will surely find a fast friend in me." "Easily gulled!" laughed Alan Hawke.
A young rear-admiral had little reason to hope for independent command; but Warren, a well-tried officer, possessing the full confidence of the First Lord, Anson, himself a master in the profession, was in poor health, and for that reason had applied for Hawke to be "joined with him in the command," apparently because he was the one flag-officer immediately available.
"She is a human icicle," he mused. "She has some deadly hold on him!" "Can you trust this Ram Lal Singh?" the woman demanded in a business-like tone. Alan Hawke nodded decisively. "He knows Hugh Fraser Johnstone well?" queried Berthe.
Long before the anxious Justine Delande arose to deck herself furtively for her tryst with Alan Hawke, Berthe Louison knew that all her orders of the night before were executed. "You are sure that you can see perfectly, Jules?" said the anxious woman. "I command the whole side of the room where you will be seated," replied the Frenchman, "and the ornaments and carved tracery cover the aperture.
Hawke's squadron might have been spared for the relief of Minorca; that, instead of attending to this important object, the admiralty, on the eighth day of March, sent two ships of the line and three frigates to intercept a coasting convoy off Cape Barfleur: on the eleventh of the same month they detached two ships of the line to the West Indies, and on the nineteenth two more to North America, where they could be of little immediate service; on the twenty-third, two of the line and three frigates a convoy-hunting off Cherbourg; and on the first of April five ships of the line, including three returned from this last service, to reinforce sir Edward Hawke, already too strong for the French fleet bound to Canada; that all these ships might have been added to Mr.
And, chuckling over how easily he had made the lovesick Abercromby help him into his "military seat" once more, Alan Hawke betook himself forthwith to Delhi, to report to General Willoughby for instant service. When he descended at Allahabad, his undress uniform of a major of the Staff Corps brought down on him a storm of congratulations from old friends gathered there.
So far was professional feeling moved that twelve prominent admirals, not all of whom were Whigs, with Hawke at their head, presented to the King a memorial, deprecating "particularly the mischief and scandal of permitting men, who are at once in high office and subordinate military command, previous to their making recriminating accusations against their commander-in-chief, to attempt to corrupt the public judgment by the publication of libels on their officers in a common newspaper, thereby exciting mutiny in your Majesty's Navy," etc.
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