was not surprised. No doubt, no doubt. What of that? In a jovial
tone he assured me that there must be many of that sort. The elder
Jacobus had been a bachelor all his life. A highly respectable
bachelor. But there had never been open scandal in that
connection. His life had been quite regular. It could cause no
offence to any one.

I said that I had been offended considerably. My interlocutor
opened very wide eyes. Why? Because a mulatto lad got a few
knocks? That was not a great affair, surely. I had no idea how
insolent and untruthful these half-castes were. In fact he seemed
to think Mr. Jacobus rather kind than otherwise to employ that
youth at all; a sort of amiable weakness which could be forgiven.

This acquaintance of mine belonged to one of the old French
families, descendants of the old colonists; all noble, all
impoverished, and living a narrow domestic life in dull, dignified
decay. The men, as a rule, occupy inferior posts in Government
offices or in business houses. The girls are almost always pretty,
ignorant of the world, kind and agreeable and generally bilingual;
they prattle innocently both in French and English. The emptiness
of their existence passes belief.

I obtained my entry into a couple of such households because some
years before, in Bombay, I had occasion to be of use to a pleasant,
ineffectual young man who was rather stranded there, not knowing
what to do with himself or even how to get home to his island
again. It was a matter of two hundred rupees or so, but, when I
turned up, the family made a point of showing their gratitude by
admitting me to their intimacy. My knowledge of the French