Casting his eyes around the wide hall gleaming with its superb
trophies of priceless arms, with a quick glance at the crowd of
sable retainers, Major Hawke realized in all the barren splendors
of the first story the absence of any womanly hand. As he followed
the obsequious house butler into a vast reception room, he murmured:

"A diplomatic tiffin, I will warrant! The old fox is sly." He wandered
idly about the Commissioner's sanctum, admiring the precious loot
of years, displayed with an artfully artless confusion. On the
walls, a series of beautiful Highland scenes recalled the Land o'
Lakes. Pausing before a sketch of a stern old Scottish keep of the
moyen age, Major Alan Hawke softly sneered: "Oatmeal Castle! The
family stronghold of the old line of the Sandy Johnstone's, nee
Fraser." And, picking up the last number of the Anglo-Indian Times,
he then affected a composure which he was far from feeling.

"Damn this sly Scotsman! Why does he not show up?" was the chafing
soliloquy of the Major, now anxious to seal his re-entree into
Delhi society with the open friendship of the most powerful European
civilian within the battered walls of the wicked city. He needed
all his nerve now, for Hugh Fraser Johnstone was a past master of
the arts of dissimulation.

In fact, the mauvais quart d'heure was really due to the innate
womanly weakness of Mademoiselle Justine Delande. This guileless
Swiss maiden had been carried off her feet by the romantic episode of
the morning. Her cool palm still tingled with the meaning pressure
of the handsome Major's hand! She had hastened away to her own
apartment, as a wounded tigress seeks its cave for a last stand!