which always leads on to failure. I wish you a good appetite for
your breakfast, which I have delayed, and for which I beg your
pardon!" She rose and swept along with her Juno strides, and had
reached the second Hall of Antiquities before Alan Hawke overtook
her. It had flashed across his mind that he had for once in his
life met a woman who was not afraid of the future, whatever had
been her past. A single malicious letter from Anstruther would ruin
him in India, for there was an ominous cloud, no bigger than a man's
hand, lingering in that hiatus between his old rank of Lieutenant
of Bengal Artillery, and the shadowy tenure of his self-dubbed
Majority. This Aspasia hid none of her methods. She had boldly
captivated the passing Pericles, and, evidently, she was the desired
one.

"Let me explain," he began, as the woman looked calmly into his
face.

"We are only losing time, Major," Madame Louison remarked, as she
sought a corner. "I see that you have already repented. Do you know
any one in Geneva?"

"Not one of the seventy-five thousand here," frankly answered Hawke.
"The only man I came here to see, the English Consul, is away on
leave."

"Then I can use you safely," answered the stranger. "Now,
I owe you a breakfast. Will you put me in my carriage? I know the
town thoroughly. Remember that it is only business that brings us
together, and yet we may become better friends." In a half an hour
they were seated in an arbor by the lake, where a homely German