! I smiled to myself in the dark
and puffed at my cigar.

Meanwhile Isaacs was palpably uneasy. First he kicked his feet free of
the stirrups, and put them back again. Then he hummed a few words of a
Persian song and let his cigar go out, after which he swore loudly in
Arabic at the eternal matches that never would light. Finally he put his
horse into a hand gallop, which could not last on such a road in the
dark, and at last he broke down completely in his efforts to do
impossible things, and began talking to me.

"You know Mr. Ghyrkins by correspondence, then?"

"Yes, and by controversy. And you, I see, know Miss Westonhaugh?"

"Yes; what do you think of her?"

"A charming creature of her type. Fair and English, she will be fat at
thirty-five, and will probably paint at forty, but at present she is
perfection--of her kind of course," I added, not wishing to engage my
friend in the defence of his three wives on the score of beauty.

"I see very little of Englishwomen," said Isaacs. "My position is
peculiar, and though the men, many of whom I know quite intimately,
often ask me to their houses, I fancy when I meet their women I can
detect a certain scorn of my nationality, a certain undefinable manner
toward me, by which I suppose they mean to convey to my obtuse
comprehension that I am but a step better than a 'native'--a 'nigger' in
fact, to use the term they love so well. So I simply avoid them, as a
rule, for my temper is hasty. Of course I understand it well enough;
they are brought up or trained by their fathers and husbands to regard
the native Indian as an inferior being, an opinion in which, on the
whole, I heartily concur. But they go a step farther and include all
Asiatics in the same category. I do not choose to be confounded with a
race I consider worn out and effete. As for the men, it is different.
They know I am rich and influential in many ways that are useful to them
now, and they hope that the fortunes of war or revolution may give them
a chance of robbing me hereafter, in which they are mistaken. Now there
is our stout friend, whom we nearly brought to grief a few minutes ago;
he is always extremely civil, and never meets me that he does not renew
his invitation to visit him."

"I should like to see something more of Mr. Currie Ghyrkins myself. I do
not believe he is half as bad as I thought. Do you ever go there?"

"Sometimes. Yes, on second thoughts I believe I call on Mr. Currie
Ghyrkins