"This falls out rightly," he mused. "I will take up all the threads
of my old society life and Madame Berthe Louison may deign to
confide a bit in me the first half of the story forced from her,
then I will guess out all the missing links of the chain. Once
domiciled here, she is helpless in my hands, for I can either gain
her inner secrets, or boldly checkmate her. And the veiled Rose of
Delhi?"

Alan Hawke dreamed not of the sorrows of the restless heart beating
in that virginal bosom. He paced the veranda of the Club gravely
preoccupied till the midnight hour. Long before that, Justine
Delande had sought her rooms in a feeble flutter of excitement over
the harmless assignation of the morrow. There was a stern old man
pacing his splendid hall alone, with an unhappy heart, that night,
for Hugh Johnstone saw again in the sweet uplifted eyes of his
beautiful child the old unanswered question!

He stood long gazing out upon the unpitying stars, while above
him, lonely and lovely, Nadine recked not the queenly splendor of
her magnificent apartment. Glittering wealth, splendid train of
servants, the golden future stretching out before her, all this
she noted not, for, even in the gray, colorless life of the pension
school at Geneva, soft-eyed Hope whispered to her of a gentle and
gracious mother! Loved--gone before, but not lost--and, here in
the land of gaudy Asiatic splendors, a strange land of wonderment
and fairy riches, she sobbed alone in her heart anguish:

"He will not speak! He tells me nothing! A marble palace this,
but never a home!" The timid girl had seen no beloved woman's face
upon the fretwork of the walls of this Aladdin's castle. And, in