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.
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