cheerfulness. "I am all right now. There is an eleven-thirty train
for Constance. I will take that, reach Munich, and get right over
to Venice by the Brenner Pass, and thence go down to Aricona, and
Brindisi. You can return to Geneva, and, by Mont Cenis and Turin
you will reach Brindisi before me. So, I leave to-night; you can
go up to Geneva to-morrow night. No one will possibly suspect our
business connection in this way. I will have time to see you depart
for Bombay, before I take the steamer for Calcutta. I have marked
off the sailings. This little occurrence here to-night has brought
us both too much under the eyes of other people."

"Bah!" said the astounded Major. "No one knows anything of us here.
We are of no importance."

"You think so?" mused the woman, as if careless of his presence.
"And yet I have seen a face here, rising out of a past that is long
dead and buried. Now, are you ready to meet me at Brindisi?"

Alan Hawke blushed even through the sun-browned complexion of the
Nepaul days, as the clear-eyed woman, faintly smiling, discerned
his "hedging" policy.

"You will not be put to the slightest inconvenience." She opened
a handsome traveling bag. The falcon-eyed Major Hawke observed the
gleam of a pearl handled and silver chased revolver of serviceable
make, and there was also a very wicked-looking Venetian dagger lying
on the table, even then within the lady's reach! "Here is the sum
of five hundred pounds in English notes," said Berthe. "That will
neatly take you to Delhi, and there is fifty more to liquidate
my bill, and pay the medical expenses. I am not desirous that the