Can I depend on you? And, not a
single word about the Baronetcy. The Viceroy has graciously sent
a special dispatch to England."
"All right. Let us join the Madame," said Hawke, with an
uneasy feeling of a coming tropical storm, "I'm glad to be out of
it," mused Hawke. "If Abercromby stays a week, both parties will
defer hostilities until he goes. If that soft-hearted Swiss fool
only telegraphs! By God, I would have liked to have had one final
tete-a-tete. She can make my fortune yet."
The flying minutes glided easily away, with Hugh Johnstone's old-time
gallantry artfully separating the two secret conspirators against
his peace. Alan Hawke lunched gayly, with but one lurking regret--a
futile sorrow that he had not bent Justine Delande to his will.
There was no dark pledge between them, no secret bond of a man's
perfidious victory, no soft surrender, the seal of a woman's
dishonor.
"Will she telegraph?" the adventurer asked himself with a beating
heart and a burning brain. "If so, then I hold them both in my
hands, and the game is mine." When the train drew out, the Major
watched the disappearing forms of the mortal enemies in a secret
wonder. "Have they made it up? Will they marry after all?" he
growled, and yet he laughed the idea to scorn. "And yet fear, as
well as love, has tied the nuptial knot before," he mused.
A new proof of Johnstone's craft was afforded him after he had, in
a leisurely way, verified the regularity of his windfall in good
London exchange, signed by the millionaire upon his home bankers,
and duly stamped.
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