ajor.
"The lady will give you your orders, only you are to tell me all for
both our sakes. I will see you rewarded," and again Ram Lal grinned in
his quiet way.

When Alan Hawke's head was resting on his pillow he suddenly became
possessed with a strange new fear. "By God! I believe that she has been
here before; she seems to be up to the whole game."

Alan Hawke's steps hardly died away in the hallway before the beautiful
Nemesis made a careful inspection of her splendid reception-room. The
splendors of its curtained arches, its fretted ceiling, and its frescoed
walls were idly passed over, for the woman only made an exhaustive
survey of its geometrical arrangement. Marie Victor was in waiting at
her side, and the mistress and maid were soon joined by Jules. Throwing
open the door of a little adjoining cabinet, Madame Louison whispered a
few private directions to the ex-Communard. "Do this at once yourself;
none of the blacks are to know. I trust none of them!" imperatively
commanded Berthe. "Marie will receive him. You are to be here at nine
o'clock, and be sure to let no one of these yellow spies observe you.
Now, both of you. Here is the rearrangement of the furniture. This will
be your first task in the morning. You can both use the whole household
for these changes. They are to obey you in all. Let all be ready when
I have breakfasted. Now, Marie, I will try and rest. Jules, inspect and
examine the house; then you can take your post for the night at my door.
Have you exhausted every possibility of any trickery in the sleeping
room?"

"There's but the one door, Madame. Trust to me. I have sounded every
inch of the walls, and even examined the floor." Jules Victor's romantic
nature thrilled with the possibilities of the little life drama to come.

Berthe Louison departed to rest upon her arms the night before the
battle. Much marveled the swarming band of Ram Lal's creatures that no
human being was suffered to approach the Lady of the Bungalow but her
two white attendants. Berthe Louison had not reached the idle luxury of
employing a dozen Hindus in infinitesimal labors near her person. For
she fathomed easily Ram Lal's devotion to Major Alan Hawke.

The presence of keen-eyed Marie Victor's brass camp-bed in My Lady's
sleeping-room was a source of wonder to the velvet-eyed spy who was
Ram Lal's especial "Bureau of Intelligence." "Strange ways has this
Mem-Sahib," murmured the Hindu when he craved to know if the