The storm of emotion had spent itself, and while
Alan Hawke squired, the aggressive Miss Genie, Casimir Wieniawski
was bending over the slightly dreamy and more romantic Miss Phenie!
They distributed themselves in open order, as they strolled along
toward the drawbridge of that most hospitable of old horrors,
Chillon Castle.
It was a day of days, and the artful Hawke laughed as he smoked his
cigar upon a rustic bench in the castle Garden. Miss Genie was at
his side, pouting, petulant, provokingly pretty and duly agnostic
as to the Polish prince.
A week later, Alan Hawke stood on the deck of the Sepoy, as that
reliable vessel steamed out of Brindisi harbor for Bombay. He was
watching a lace handkerchief, waved by a graceful woman, standing
alone upon the pier. The adventurer drew a silver rupee from his
pocket, and then gayly tossed it into the waves, crying, "Here's
for luck!" as he watched the slender, distant, womanly figure move
up the pier. There lay the Empress of India with steam now curling
from her stacks, ready to follow on to Calcutta. "I have not broken
her lines yet," murmured Major Hawke as he paced the deck, "but
I have her pretty well surrounded, cunning as she is!" and so he
complacently ordered his first bottle of pale ale.
CHAPTER IV.
THE VEILED ROSEBUD OF DELHI.
The October winds were whirling the pine needles down the mountain
defiles in the bracing Alpine autumn, as Alan Hawke sped on past
Suez, gliding on through the stifling furnace heat of the Red Sea,
past Mocha, and dashing along through the Bridge of Tears, to Aden.
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