and friend, and he shall become a success—as great a success as your friend. I always wondered how that man got on. Did The Mussuck come to you with the Civil List and, dropping on one knee—no, two knees, à la Gibbon—hand it to you and say: 'Adorable angel, choose your friend's appointment?'"
"Lucy, your long experiences of the Military department have demoralized you. One doesn't do that sort of thing on the Civil side."
"No disrespect meant to 'Jack's service,' my dear: I only asked for information. Give me three months, and see what changes I shall work in my prey."
"Go your own way, since you must. But I'm sorry that I was weak enough to suggest the amusement."
"'I am all discretion and may be trusted to an in-fin-ite extent,'" quoted Mrs. Hauksbee from The Fallen Angel; and the conversation ceased with Mrs. Tarcass's last, long-drawn war-whoop.
Her bitterest enemies, and she had many, could hardly accuse Mrs. Hauksbee of wasting her time. Otis Yeere was one of those wandering "dumb" characters, foredoomed through life to be nobody's property. Ten years in Her Majesty's Bengal Civil Service, spent, for the most part, in undesirable Districts, had dowered him with little to be proud of, and nothing to give confidence. Old enough to have lost the first fine careless rapture that showers on the immature 'Stunt imaginary Commissionerships and Stars, and sends him into the collar with coltish earnestness and abandon; too young to be yet able to look back upon the progress he had made and thank Providence that under the conditions of to-day he had come even so far, he stood upon the dead-centre of his career. And when a man stands still, he feels the slightest impulse from without. Fortune had ruled that Otis Yeere should be, for the first part of his service, one of the rank and file who are ground up in the wheels of the Administration; losing heart and soul, and
