'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. Tarkass'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
given him little to be proud of, and nothing to bring 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
the 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 mind and strength, in the process. Until steam replaces