It had been with a guilty, beating heart that Justine Delande abandoned her fair, young charge to the morning ministrations of a bevy of dark-skinned servants. However, the sturdy Genevese waiting-maid who had accompanied them to India was at hand, when the spinster incoherently murmured her all too voluble excuses for an early morning visit to the European shops on the Chandnee Chouk, and then fled away as if fearful of her own shadow. She was duly thankful that no one had observed her entrance to the jewel shop, and the refuge of the room, pointed out by the amiable Ram Lal, at once reassured her. Justine was accorded a brief breathing spell by the fates as the Major settled his plans.
It did not seem so very hard, this first fall from maidenly grace, when Major Alan Hawke, entering the little armory chamber, politely led the startled woman to a seat, with a graceful self-introduction.
“I should have recognized you any where, Mademoiselle Justine,” deftly remarked the Major, “by your resemblance to your most charming sister. You have, I hope, received some private letters from her, with regard to my visit?” The Swiss gouverriante faltered forth her affirmative answer, while secretly approving the enthusiastic judgment of her distant sister upon this most admirable Crichton of English Majors. “Then,” said Hawke, alluringly, “we must be very good friends, you and I, for we are alone together, among strangers, in this far-away land!” Then he calmly dropped into an easy discourse, in which Geneva and Sister Euphrosyne punctuated the graceful flow of his friendly chat. There was nothing very sinful in the debut of this little intrigue.
“Let us always speak French!” said Alan Hawke, with a quiet, warning glance at the closed door. “These same soft-eyed Hindostanees are the very subtlest serpents of the earth. The only way to do, is never to trust any of them!” The Major was busied in carefully taking a mental measurement of Mademoiselle Justine, who, still well on the sunny side of forty, was really a very comely replica of her severer intellectual sister. Justine Delande still lingered in that temperate zone of life where a fair fighting chance of matrimony was still hers. “If a ray of sunshine ever steals into the flinty bosom of a Swiss woman, there maybe a gleam or two still left here,” mused the Major, most adroitly avoiding all reference to Justine’s rosebud charge, and only essaying to place her entirely at her ease.
But, in proportion as he gracefully labored, the frightened governess began to realize the danger of her situation.
“I hope that no one will observe us,” she said, speaking rapidly and under her breath. “Mr. Johnstone is so eccentric, so haughty, and so very peculiar!” Her distress was evident, and the gallant Major at once hastened to allay her fears.
“I have already thought of that. My old friend, Ram Lal, has a lovely garden in rear of his house and there we will be entirely unobserved. For I have so much that I would say to you.” It was with a sigh of relief that the frightened woman hastily passed through Ram Lal’s spacious snuggery in rear of his jewel mart and was soon ensconced in a little pagoda, where Major Hawke seated himself at her side and skillfully took up his soft refrains.
In half an hour they were thoroughly en bon rapport, for the graceful Major Hawke adroitly conversed with his laughing eyes frankly beaming upon the lonely woman. He had drawn a long breath of relief when he ran over the letter which the delighted Justine frankly submitted to him for his inspection. The fair Euphrosyne’s secret advices justified his warmest anticipations. He had conquered her heart.
“I will not delay you longer this morning,” he said at last, with an artful mock confidence. “I am infinitely grateful to you for so kindly coming to meet me here. And it is only due to you to tell you why I begged you to come here to-day. The nature of my important official duties is such that I am not permitted to exhibit my real character to any one here as yet. I am charged with some very delicate public duties which may force me to linger here for some time, or perhaps disappear without notice, only to return in the same mysterious manner. But in me you have a stanch secret friend always. I have already written to your charming sister, and I expect to receive from her letters which will be followed by letters to you from her. And I shall write to-day and tell her of your goodness to me.” Miss Justine Delande’s eyes were downcast. Her agitated bosom was throbbing with an unaccustomed fire, and the desire to be safely sheltered once more in Hugh Johnstone’s marble palace was now strong upon her.
Hawke paused, still keeping his pleading eyes fixed upon the fluttering-hearted woman’s face. “Miss Nadine sees absolutely no one!” murmured the governess, “and, of course, I never leave her. It is a very exacting and laborious position, this charge which I now fill, and of course the life is a very lonely one, though Nadine is an angel!” enthusiastically cried Miss Justine.