ntial and important and highly
personal to communicate, a matter in which I could, if I only would, be
of the greatest possible assistance. From these appearances twenty years
had taught me to fly to any burrow, but your dinner-table offers no
retreat; you are hoist, so to speak, on your own carving-fork. There are
men, of course, and even women, who have scruples about taking advantage
of so intimate and unguarded an opportunity, but Armour, I rapidly
decided, was not one of these. His sophistication was progressing, but
it had not reached that point. He wanted something--I flew instantly to
the mad conclusion that he wanted Dora. I did not pause to inquire why
he should ask her of me. It had seemed for a long time eminently proper
that anybody who wanted Dora should ask her of me. The application was
impossible, but applications nearly always were impossible. Nobody knew
that better than the Secretary to the Government of India in the Home
Department.

I squared my shoulders and we got through the soup. It was necessary to
apologize for the fish. 'I suppose one must remember,' I said, 'that it
has to climb six thousand feet,' when suddenly he burst out.

'Sir William Lamb tells me,' he said, and stopped to swallow some wine,
'that there is something very good going in Calcutta and that I should
ask you to help me to get it. May I?'

So the miserable idea--the happy thought--had occurred to somebody else.

'Is there?' I said, with interest and attention.

'It's something in the School of Art. A man named Fry has died.'

'Ah!' I said, 'a man named Fry. He, I think was Director of that
institution.' I looked at Armour in the considering, measuring way with
which we suggest to candidates for posts that their fitness to fill them
is not to be absolutely taken for granted. 'Fry was a man of fifty-six,'
I said.

'I am thirty.' He certainly did not look it, but years often fall
lightly upon a temperament.

'It's a vile climate.'

'I know. Is it too vile, do you think,' he said anxiously, 'to ask a
lady to share?'

'Lots of ladies do share it,' I replied, with amazing calmness; 'but I
must decline absolutely to enter into that.'

My frown was so forbidding that he couldn't and didn't dare to go on.
He looked dashed and disappointed; he was really a fool of an applicant,
quite ready to retire from the siege on the first intimation that the
gates were not to be thrown open at his approach.

'Do you think you would