a special
reference to seclusion as well as comfort. An Indian Love's Labyrinth.

"Just the very place!" murmured Alan Hawke, as he hastened away to dress
for the diner de famille, with his timorous secret foe, Hugh Johnstone.
"I wonder if my canny friend, in his humble days as Hugh Fraser, ever
assisted at lespelits diners de Trianon here?

"Probably not, for friend Hugh was ever apter in squeezing the nimble
rupee than in chanting sonnets to his mistress's eyebrow. How the devil
did he ever catch a wife, such as Valerie Delavigne must have been?
Either a case of purchase or starvation, I'll warrant!"

Ram Lal Singh was growing dubious as to the perfect sweep of his hungry
talons over Madame Louison's future expenditures. He had noted, with
some secret alarm, a grave-faced, sturdy Frenchman, still in the
forties, who was cast in the role of either courier or butler for the
beautiful Mem-Sahib, whose loveliness in extenso he so far only divined
by guess-work.

In the stranger lady's special car there was also, at her side, a
truculent Parisienne-looking woman of thirty, whose bustling air,
hawk-like visage, and perfect aplomb bespoke the confidential French
maid. "I must tell Hawke Sahib of this at once," mused Ram Lal. "We
must, in some way, get rid of these foreign servants." The man had
a semi-military air, heightened by the sweeping scar--a slash from a
neatly swung saber. This purple facial adornment was Jules Victor's
especial pride. In these days of "ninety" he often recurred to the
stroke which had made his fortune in the dark reign of the Commune.

As a wild Communard soldier he had risked his life vainly to save the
aged Colonel Delavigne from a furious mob, for the red rosette in the
old officer's buttonhole had cost him his life in an awkward promenade,
and this sent the orphans, Valerie and Alixe Delavigne, adrift upon
the mad maelstrom of Paris incendie. While Ram Lal glowered in his
dissatisfaction, Madame Berthe Louison complacently regarded her two
secret protectors on guard in the special car. For the strange turn of
Fortune's wheel, which had left Alixe Delavigne alone in the world,
and rich enough to effect her special vengeance upon her one enemy,
had given to Jules Victor and his wife Marie a sinecure for life as the
personal attendants of the soi-disant Madame Berthe Louison.

Marie was but a wild-eyed child of ten when Jules had picked her up in
the flaming streets of Paris, and they had g