And so it fell out that four days after Alixe Delavigne had returned to Rosebank Villa, that a packet of important letters was smuggled past the droning Professor’s picket line, one of which caused Nadine Johnstone to hide her tell-tale blushes in her room.
“To-morrow I will come by, to deliver some little purchases of the maids! Have your answers all ready. I will be here at ten, at the garden gate!” Long after the Yankee Professor had left the “Folly” for St. Heliers that night, the lonely girl bent her beautiful head over the pages, destined to safely reach her lover’s eyes in fair London town. And to Berthe Louison, she now poured out her loving heart, for she knew that her protecting friends would soon be near her.
“We are waiting, watching, and planning,” wrote Alixe Delavigne. “Be cheerful—silent—watchful! I must be near you, I must see you, face to face, to tell you all the story of the past! I will then tell you, my own darling child, of the mother whom you have never known. But, first, Major Hardwicke must open a way to your side! Beware of the schemes of Alan Hawke! He will be here to-morrow, and he may steal over to Jersey, though his duty takes him for a month to the Continent! You will surely see Major Hardwicke before you see me for Andrew Fraser might take alarm at a sight of my face and so hide you away from us all!”
Miss Mildred Anstruther was a delicate symphony in gray, as she gracefully presided the next evening over the dinner table at which Alixe Delavigne, Captain Anstruther, Major Hardwicke, and Captain Murray merrily discussed the sudden hastening of Captain Eric Murray’s nuptials. Hardwicke’s duty as “best man” was now the only bar to the beginning of a campaign destined to foil Andrew Fraser’s Loch Leven tactics of imprisoning his niece and ward.
“You will have but a brief honeymoon, Eric!” laughed Hardwicke.
“You have promised to stand by me, Harry,” replied his friend. “See me married to-morrow, then a week’s honeymoon at Jersey is all that I ask! I can bestow my wife there with a dear friend, who has the prettiest old Norman chateau-maison on the island, and after that be near you there at Rozel Bay to work up the final discomfiture of this old vampire. I only claim the attendance of the whole party at my wedding, then I will disappear and spy out the ground for you long before you are ready to astonish the dreamy old bookworm. I have made my own plans, and Flossie has agreed to our runaway trip ‘in the interests of the service’! She is a soldier’s daughter, remember!” Miss Mildred, wreathed in her soft laces, shimmering in her gray poplin, and bending her stately head in salutation, extended a delicate hand, loaded down with quaint old Indian rings, to each, when the coffee was served.
“I will leave you now to the hatching of your famous conspiracy for the invasion of the Island of Jersey.” The old gentlewoman passed smilingly through the door where the three knightly soldiers stood bowing low, and then the four conspirators sat down to arrange the dramatis persona of a little society play in “High Life,” in which Professor Andrew Fraser was destined to be the central figure, and act without “lines” or rehearsal.
The “leading lady” was at the present moment dreaming of a golden future in her own rooms at the “Banker’s Folly.” Nadine Johnstone had been allowed to make her apartments as bright and cheery as her buoyant nature suggested.
For Andrew Fraser, after much discussion with Janet Fairbarn, had convoyed the heiress to St. Heliers for a day. The resources of all the local furnishers were taxed by the young prisoner’s taste, and, the old executor, unbending a little, grimly vaunted his “dangerous liberality.” “I’ll be bail for the expenditure of five hundred pounds, as an extra allowance,” he said. “Now make yourself snug here, for ye’ll bide here the whole three years! As to the bookmen, music, and libraries, I’ll give ye a free hand.
“The yearly allowance of yere lamented father will cover all yere dealings with mantua-makers and milliners. That is yere own affair—all that sort of womanly gear. We will make one day of it, and if ye are lacking aught, then Miss Janet can bring ye to town, or the dealers can come.” It was, thus self-deluded, that Andrew Fraser noted the coming cheerfulness of his defiant young charge. He fancied he had provided every wish of her lonely heart. But the trailing lines of smoke of the daily Southampton packets only spoke to Nadine of a growing correspondence with Major Harry Hardwicke, Royal Engineers. She waited now for Simpson’s arrival for news of the Delhi mystery—the death of the unloving parent, who had been only her jailer.