“This Yankee fellow has a keen wit! His ideas on the Ten Tribes are wonderful! His life has been a study of the Mongolians, the Tartars, and the history of the American Indians! I will be a bit decent to the fellow, and I’ll get at the meat of his knowledge! He’s young and a great chatterer, maybe, but a help to me. Body o’ me! But to get there myself—to Thibet.
“Ah!” sighed the old misanthrope, “I’m too old now! And Hugh has failed me! Nothing from him. This sair blow cuts off the last hope! And no educated men of Thibet ever travel! Blindness—blindness everywhere!” he babbled on, while above him, two women, in an agonized leave-taking, were silently sobbing in each other’s arms, while the happy Swiss servant made her boxes. Nadine Johnstone’s utter wretchedness gave her no sense of a loss by the hand of Death. For a father’s love she had never known, and her mother—a mystery!
The two women cowering together above the old pedant’s den with sorrowing hearts communed while Justine Delande directed the packing of her slender belongings. There was a new spirit of revolt stirring in Nadine Johnstone’s breast, and her face glowed with the resentment of an outraged heart. When all was ready for Justine’s flitting, the heiress of a million pounds finished a little memorandum, which she calmly explained to the Swiss preceptress. The sense of her future rights stirred her like a bugle blast, and with clear eyes, she looked beyond the three years toward Freedom.
“It rests with you, Justine, as to whether I am left friendless for three years of a gloomy captivity. First you are to telegraph to Major Harry Hardwicke, Royal Engineers, Delhi, and if you receive no reply, then telegraph to General Willoughby for the Major’s address. When at Granville, and, not before, send this letter to Major Hardwicke at the ‘Junior United Service Club, London’.” The beautiful girl was blushing rosy red as the sympathetic Swiss folded her to her breast. “Then, when you get to Paris, go to No. 9 Rue Berlioz, and leave this letter there for Madame Berthe Louison. Go yourself. Trust no one. When you have conferred with dear Euphrosyne, you can send all your letters to Madame Louison at Paris under cover. She will find out a safe way to get them to me—even if she has to send her man, Jules, over here. He is quick-witted, and he will find a way to reach me.”
There was a dawning wonder in Justine’s eyes.
“Who is this strange Madame Louison? Can you trust her?”
“Ah! Justine!” murmured Nadine, “She is only one who loves me, for love’s own sake, but I know I can trust her. She knows something of my mother’s past life—something that I do not know. This old tyrant will now try to cut me off from all the outside world. He has had some strange power given to him by the father who was only my father in name.
“I will obey you. I swear it!” cried Justine. “And old Simpson will probably be coming on soon. He loves you. He will serve you.”
“Yes,” joyously exclaimed Nadine, with a glowing face. “And he adores Major Hardwicke, whose father saved his life at Lucknow. There is one dawning hope. You are not to write one word till you hear from me. I know that Madame Louison will manage to send Jules to me in some safe disguise,” she proudly cried, “and remember—I shall not be always a poor prisoner with her hands tied. The day of my deliverance comes. When I am twenty-one, I can reward both you and Euphrosyne. She shall have a home to live in ease. And you,—you shall go out into the world with me, and aid me to find my mother. Even in the tomb I shall find her. I shall know of her love. For I shall see her loving face, even only in a picture. The face that has blessed me in my dreams.”
Justine Delande saw a future reward awaiting the two faithful guardians of the childhood of Miss Million. With a sudden impulse, she cried: “There is one to aid even nearer to us now than Major Hardwicke. For I have a telegram from Euphrosyne, that Major Hawke is at Geneva.”