been led on to nothing more compromising than a subscription to the
Young Women's Christian Association, though no one could have been
more docile or more intelligent. During one viceroyalty of happy
memory half a dozen clever and amusing men and women came together
in Simla--it was a mere fortuitous occurrence, aided by a joyous
ruler who hated being bored as none before or ever since have hated
it--and the place has lived socially upon the reputation of that
meteoric term ever since. Whereas the domestic virtues are no more
deeply rooted anywhere than under the deodars; nor could any one, I
hasten to add, chronicle the fact with more profound satisfaction
than myself. A dinner-party, however, is not a favourable setting
for the domestic virtues; it does them so little justice that one
could sometimes almost wish them left at home, and I was talking of
Simla dinner-parties, where I have encountered so many. How often
have I been consulted as to the best school for boys in England, or
instructed as to how much I should let my man charge me for shoe-
blacking, or advised as to the most effectual way of preventing the
butler from stealing my cheroots, while Dora Harris, remote as a
star, talked to a cavalry subaltern about wind-galls and splints!
At these moments I felt my seniority bitterly; to give Dora to a
cavalry subaltern was such plain waste.

It was an infinite pleasure to know any one as well as I seemed to
know Dora Harris. She, I believe, held no one else upon the same
terms of intimacy, though she found women, of course, with whom she
fluttered and embraced; and while there were, naturally, men with
whom I exchanged the time o'day in terms more or less cordial, I am
certain that I kept all my closest thoughts for her. It is
necessary again to know Simla to understand how our friendship was
gilded by the consideration that it was on both sides perfectly