ormal affair.
I believe that she brought letters from Paris to Hugh Johnstone." Late
that night Alan Hawke laughed, as he pocketed his winnings at baccarat.
"Three hundred pounds to the good! I'm a devil for luck!" And he sat
down in his room to think over all the events of a day which had half
turned his head. Warned by Justine Delande that Madame Louison was
bidden to dine with Hugh Johnstone, Alan Hawke closely interrogated her.
She evidently knew and suspected nothing. "Ah! Berthe plays a lone hand
against the world," he smiled.

His mysterious employer had merely bidden him be ready to meet her
there, without surprise. There was as yet no lightning move up on the
chess board, and in vain he studied her resolute, smiling face. "All I
can tell you," murmured Justine to her handsome Mentor, in the seclusion
of Ram Lal's back room, "is that this Madame Berthe Louison comes to
spend the day in looking over Hugh Johnstone's art treasures. Nadine and
I are to meet her, with the master. Do you know aught of her?"

"Nothing, dear Justine," unhesitatingly lied Alan Hawke. "Watch her and
tell me all."

"I will," smilingly replied the Swiss. "I have a strange fear that Hugh
Johnstone has known her before, that he intends to marry her, and then
to send us two, Nadine and I, away to a quiet life in Europe." Whereupon
Alan Hawke laughed loud and long.

"She is only a bird of passage, some wealthy globe wanderer, perhaps
even a sly adventuress. No, old Johnstone will not tempt Fortune."

"He has been so unusually amiable," agnostically said Justine. "Of
course he could hide such a design easily from Nadine, who knows nothing
of love."

"She will learn! She will learn--in due time," laughed Hawke. "There is
but one thing possible. This whole pretended visit may be a sham--she
may even be the belle amie of this old curmudgeon."

"I will watch all three of them! You shall know all!" murmured Justine,
as she stole away, not without the kisses of her secret knight burning
upon her lips.

"What a consummate actress!" mused Alan Hawke, when, for the first time,
since Nadine Johnstone's arrival, a formal dinner party enlivened the
dull monotony of the marble house. The round table, set for five, gave
Hugh Johnstone the strategic advantage of separating his secret enemy
from his blushing daughter. Hawke demurely paid his devoirs to Madame
Justine Delande, with a finely studied inattention to either the guest
of the evening or the