The bustle and hum of awaking Delhi interested him not, for a fond unrest led him down to the great walled inclosure of the marble house.
“Shall I see her to-day? Will she be in the garden?” he murmured in his loving day-dream.
The springy feet of the charger dropped noiselessly on the lonely avenue and already the double carriage gate was in sight. An instinct of martial coquetry caused Harry Hardwicke to gather up his reins and straighten lightly into the military position of eyes right. He was watching the gate of Paradise, a Paradise as yet forbidden to him.
Yes. There was the gleam of white robes shining out across the friendly gate.
Standing under a huge spreading camphor tree, a graceful form was there, clear cut against the dark foliage, and seeming to float upon the tender green of the dewy grass. A nymph—a goddess, shyly standing there, was shading her eyes with one slender hand and gazing down the path toward the golden East which was bringing to the Lady of his dreams, a flood of golden sunlight and her secret adorer, the man whose lonely young heart had throned her as its queen. Hardwicke raised his head quickly as a wild shriek sounded out upon the still morning air.
The lover with one agonized glance saw the outspread arms of Justine Delande, and heard again a voice which had thrilled his soul in loving memory. It appealed for aid. Nadine was shrieking for help.
With one glance, the young soldier gathered his noble steed. There was but twenty yards for the rally and the raise, but the game old “Garibaldi” dropped as lightly on the other side of the closed carriage gate as any “blue ribbon” of the Galway “Blazers.”
There was a moment, but one fleeting moment, given to the lover to see the danger menacing the woman whom he loved. His heart was icy, but his hand was quick. There, a few feet only from the horribly fascinated girl, a cobra di capdlo rising and swaying in angry undulations. The huge snake was angrily hissing with a huge distended puffed hood swelling menacingly over the dirty brown body. “Standfast!” yelled Hardwicke in agony.
There was a gleam of steel, the rush of a charger’s feet, and as man and horse swept by the fainting girl—the swing of a saber, and the heavy trampling of iron-clad hoofs! Only Justine Delande saw the flashing saber cleaving the air again and again, as Hardwicke gracefully leaned to his saddle bow, in the right and left cut on the ground. And Garibaldi’s beating hoofs soon completed the work of the circling sword.
And then as the Swiss woman broke her trance and turned to run toward the house, the young horseman leaped lightly to the ground. “Go on, go on!” he cried. “The other snake is not far off!” When Simpson and the frightened domestics rushed out to the veranda in a panic, they only saw before them a graceful youth with his strong arms burdened with the senseless form of the woman he loved—the woman whose life he had saved!