"The old curmudgeon keeps her
judiciously veiled from mortal ken. No man but General Willoughby
has ever exchanged a word with her. The dear old boy--his memory
does not go back beyond his last B. and S.--he can't even sketch her
beauty in words. And she is as hazy, even to the Madam-General--our
secret commanding officer. There is a continuous affront to society
in this old monomaniac's treatment of that girl."
"You would like to storm the Castle Perilous, and awaken the
Sleeping Beauty?" archly said Hawke, as they rolled along under a
huge alley of banyan trees.
"Not at all," gravely said Hardwicke. "She is only a girl, like other
girls, I presume; but, this old fool is only fit for the old days,
when the kings of Oude flew kites and hunted with the cheetah; or,
half drunken, dozed, lolling away their lives in these marble-screened
zenanas, with the automatic beauties of the seraglio. Our English cannon
have knocked all that nonsense silly. Here is a high-spirited,
Christian English girl, shut up like a slave. It's only the
unfairness of the thing that strikes me." Hawke eyed the blue-eyed,
rosy young fellow of twenty-six with an evident interest. Stalwart
and symmetrical in figure, Hardwicke's frank, manly face glowed in
indignation.
"You've won your spurs quickly out here," said Hawke. "You have not
been long enough in India to case-harden into the cursed egotism
of this hard-hearted land, and remember, age, crawling on, has
indurated old 'Fraser-Johnstone.
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