"Nadine is only eighteen--she has three years to remain under
legal tutelage. Perhaps Andrew Fraser may have been already coached
upon his course by his unrelenting kinsman. And there is a fortune
waiting for father and son in the perquisites." Madame Louison fell
asleep in a vain quandary as to the precise age when men ceased
to value wealth and to sell their souls for gold. That question
was still undecided when the steamer Sparrow Hawk sped into Dover
harbor.
The beautiful wanderer was now clearly resolved as to her future
treatment of Alan Hawke. "My foe dead, the theater of war is transferred
to Great Britain. He is not necessary to my own campaign, but, in
watching him, I may be able to shield Nadine from his crafty plots.
If he should try to secretly make friends with the Frasers, and
to return to India, to aid the nephew, he might assist in robbing
Valerie's child of this mountain of miserably gotten wealth.
"Thank God, I can make her rich. But Captain Anstruther will know
the Viceroy's whole mind, and I can trust to him." But her cheeks were
rosy red and her dancing dark eyes dropped in a sudden confusion,
as the handsome aid-de-camp leaped aboard the steamer at Dover
Pier.
"I did not expect you!" she murmured.
"I knew, of course, from your dispatch when you would arrive, and
so I came down to further the Viceroy's business!" the soldier
said in a sudden confusion.
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