C. now for Berthe Louison and the
fireworks! But, first, old Ram Lal! They bowled the old boy out! I
suppose that he has already told Alixe Delavigne that she has been
outwitted. I hold the trump cards now! No single word without its
golden price! I must not make one false step! As to the club men,
I only join in the general wonder." He made a careful and very
studied toilet and sauntered out of the club en flaneur, and then
stealthily betook himself to the pagoda in Ram Lal's garden, where
his innocent dupe had so often waited for him with a softly beating
heart.
"I'm glad the girl is gone," mused Alan Hawke. "If she were here,
the chorus hymning Hardwicke's perfections might set her young heart
on fire." He was, as yet, ignorant of the tender bond of gratitude
fast ripening into Love. For, Love, that strange plant, rooted in
the human heart, thrives in absence, and, watered by the tears of
sorrow and adversity, fills the longing and faithful heart, in days
of absence, with its flowers of rarest fragrance and blossoms of
unfading beauty. Nadine Johnstone, speeding on over sapphire seas,
had already conquered the tender secret of the simple Justine
Delande's heart; and in her own loving day-dreams:
"Aye she loot the tears down fa' for Jock o' Hazeldean!"
"I must see him again! I must see him!" she fondly pledged her
waiting heart. With the serpent cunning of a loving maiden, she
brooded like a dove with tender eyes, and so in her heart of hearts,
determined to draw forth from her stalwart cousin, Douglas Fraser,
the secret of their future destination.
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