"Twenty-five pounds--and a little trumpery jewelry--I can't ever
get back to India on that!" He seemed to hear again the rasping
voice of the vulpine caller at Monte Carlo: "Messieurs! Faites vos
jeux! Rien ne va plus! Le jeu est fait!" And, if a dismal failure
in Lender had been his Leipsic, the black week at Monaco had been
his long drawn-out Waterloo! "I was a rank fool to go there," he
growled, "and a greater fool to come over here! I might have got
on easily to Malta, and then chanced it from there to Calcutta!"

The sun's last lances glittered on the waters gleaming clear as
crystal, with their deep blue tint of reflected sky, and liquid
sapphire! The gardens were becoming deserted as the loungers dropped
off homeward one by one, and still the handsome young fellow sat
moodily gazing down into the rushing waters of the arrowy Rhone,
as if he fain would cast the dark burden of his dreary thoughts
far away from him down into those darkling waters. But thirty-two
years of age, Alan Hawke had already outlived all his wild boyish
romances. The thrill with which he had first set foot upon the land
of Clive and Warren Hastings had faded away long years gone! And,
Fate had stranded him at Geneva!

As he sat, still irresolute as to his future movements, the dying
sunlight gilded the splendid panorama of the whole Mont Blanc
group. Rose and purple, with fading gold and amethystine gleams
played softly upon the far-away giant peak, with its noble bodyguard,
the Aiguilles du Midi, Grandes Jorasses, the Dent du Geant, the
sturdy pyramid of the Mole, and the long far sweep of the Voirons.
But he noted not these splendors of the dying sun god, as he stood
there moodily defying adverse fate, a modern Manfred. "I might
with this get on to London--but what waits me there? Only scorn,