Where does your promotion carry you?"
"Oh, anywhere--everywhere," laughed Hardwicke. "I may be sent home.
I'm entitled to a long leave--there's my wound, you know. I've only
stayed on here to oblige Willoughby." It was easy to see that the
frank, splendid young fellow was but awkwardly filling his role
of polite inquisitor, for they talked shop a couple of hours over
a bottle at the Club, and Hardwicke at last took his leave, no whit
the wiser.
"If he did not post me as to the heiress, at least, old Willoughby
gets no valuable information," laughed the Major, that night. "The
boy seems to be ambitious and heart-whole. Old Johnstone will soon
clear out to the Highlands, I suppose, with this hidden pearl."
But Major Hawke laughed softly when the morning brought to him a
personal invitation to dine "informally" with General Willoughby.
"Wants to know, you know," laughed the Major. "All I have to do is
to keep cool and let him drink himself jolly, and so, answer his
own questions."
"That Hardwicke is an uncommonly fine young fellow." So decided
the Major as he splashed into his morning tub. There was one man,
however, in Delhi who now viewed Hawke's presence with a secret
alarm, amounting to dismay. It was the stern old miserly Scotsman
who had paced his floor half the night in a vain effort to
reassure himself. "What does he know? I must have old Ram Lal watch
him," mused Hugh Johnstone.
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