with coldness because the _Sportsman_ had discovered
too many virtues in his _Gadfly_, exalted her, indeed, into a favourite
for Saturday's hurdle race, a notability for which Gianacchi felt
himself too modest. "They say," Fillimore had written, "that the
_Gadfly_ has been seen jumping by moonlight"--the sort of the thing to
spoil any book. Fillimore was an acute and weary-looking little man with
a peculiarly sweet smile and an air of cynicism which gave to his
lightest word a dangerous and suspicious air. It was rumoured in
official circles that he had narrowly escaped beheading, for pointing
out too ironically the disabilities of a Viceroy who insisted on
reviewing the troops from a cushioned carriage with the horses taken
out. Fillimore seemed to think that if nature had not made such a
nobleman a horseman, the Queen-Empress should not have made him
Governor-General of India. Fillimore was full of prejudices. Gianacchi,
however, found it impossible to treat him coldly. His smoothness of
temperament stood in the way. Instead, he imparted the melodious
information that the _Gadfly_ had pecked badly twice at Tollygunge that
morning, and smiled with pathetic philosophy. "Always let 'em use their
noses," said Fillimore, and there seemed to be satire in it. Fillimore
certainly had a flair, and when Beryl Stace presently demanded of him,
"What's the dead bird going to be on Saturday, Filly?" he put it
generously at her service. Among the friends of Mr. Stanhope and his
company were also several gentlemen, content, for their personal effect,
with the lustre they shed upon the Stock Exchange--gentlemen of high
finance, who wrote their names at the end of directors' reports, but
never in the visitors' book at Government House, who were little more to
the Calcutta world than published receipts for so many lakhs, except
when they were seen now and then driving in fleet dog-carts across the
Maidan toward comfortable suburban residences where ladies were not
entertained. They were extremely, curiously devoted to business; but if
they allowed themselves any amusement other than company promoting it
was the theatre, of which their appreciation had sometimes an odd
relation to the merits of performance. This supper, on the part of Miss
Beryl Stace and one or two other of Mr. Stanhope's artistes, might have
been considered a return of hospitality to these gentlemen, since the
suburban residences stood lavishly open to the profession.