Jack can raise money on the jewels now for us
both. I must tell these fellows of the French Bank here that I go
to London to see my own lawyers. I'll go over, settle with Anstruther,
and then just quietly disappear. The next blow shall come out of
the blackness of night, and I'll strike them all at once!"
In the evening, Major Alan Hawke drove with Justine Delande to the
restaurant garden, where, long months before, he had first learned
the daring hardihood of his fair employer--the acute woman who
had fooled him at every turn. His heart was saddened with all the
fresh hopes which had failed him. He had frankly told Euphrosyne
Delande that a return journey to India, and a long and bitter
struggle now lay between him and the rank and competence which he
would need to make her loving sister his wife.
Three hours later Justine Delande's arms clung desparingly around
the handsome outcast, as he was leaving her to be escorted home
by the adroit Francois, already in waiting without the restaurant
with a closed carriage. The presage of sorrow weighed upon her
loving heart.
"Alan, My God, I can not let you go. You are the one brightness
of my life. My heart of hearts. My very soul," sobbed the wretched
woman. "I have fears for you. They will kill you in that far land,
these powerful enemies. That mysterious devil woman who bends all
to her will will ruin you." And then, really touched at heart,
the desperate trickster drew off his finger a superb diamond, the
nonpareil, the choicest stone of Ram Lal's unwilling tribute.
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