THE QUEEN'S CUP

by

G. A. Henty.







Chapter 1.

A large party were assembled in the drawing room of Greendale, Sir
John Greendale's picturesque old mansion house. It was early in
September. The men had returned from shooting, and the guests were
gathered in the drawing room; in the pleasant half hour of dusk
when the lamps have not yet been lighted, though it is already too
dark to read. The conversation was general, and from the latest
news from India had drifted into the subject of the Italian belief
in the Mal Occhio.

"Do you believe in it, Captain Mallett?" asked Bertha, Sir John's
only child, a girl of sixteen; who was nestled in an easy chair
next to that in which the man she addressed was sitting.

"I don't know, Bertha."

He had known her from childhood, and she had not yet reached an age