ften carry him
further than the cunning of the cynic; also you have a will and know how
to direct it.'

I bowed, and did my best to hold back my satisfaction at his words from
showing in my face.

'Still,' he went on, 'all this would not cause me to submit to you the
offer that I am about to make, for many a prettier fellow than yourself
is after all unlucky, or a fool at the bottom, or bad tempered and
destined to the dogs, as for aught I know you may be also. But I take
my chance of that because you suit me in another way. Perhaps you may
scarcely know it yourself, but you have beauty, senor, beauty of a very
rare and singular type, which half the ladies of Seville will praise
when they come to know you.'

'I am much flattered,' I said, 'but might I ask what all these
compliments may mean? To be brief, what is your offer?'

'To be brief then, it is this. I am in need of an assistant who must
possess all the qualities that I see in you, but most of all one which
I can only guess you to possess--discretion. That assistant would not
be ill-paid; this house would be at his disposal, and he would have
opportunities of learning the world such as are given to few. What say
you?'

'I say this, senor, that I should wish to know more of the business in
which I am expected to assist. Your offers sound too liberal, and I fear
that I must earn your bounty by the doing of work that honest men might
shrink from.'

'A fair argument, but, as it happens, not quite a correct one. Listen:
you have been told that yonder physician, to whose house you went but
now, and these'--here he repeated four or five names--'are the greatest
of their tribe in Seville. It is not so. I am the greatest and the
richest, and I do more business than any two of them. Do you know
what my earnings have been this day alone? I will tell you; just over
twenty-five gold pesos,* more than all the rest of the profession have
taken together, I will wager. You want to know how I earn so much; you
want to know also, why, if I have earned so much, I am not content to
rest from my labours. Good, I will tell you. I earn it by ministering to
the vanities of women and sheltering them from the results of their own
folly. Has a lady a sore heart, she comes to me for comfort and advice.
Has she pimples on her face, she flies to me to cure them. Has she a
secret love affair, it is I who hide her indiscretion; I consult the
future for her, I help her to atone the past, I