g man who happened to be connected by blood with people his
lordship had intimately known. No doubt it was simply as the clever
young man that Peter received the next morning, from the dispenser of
his lordship's hospitality, a note asking him to dine on the morrow.
Such cards had come to him before, and he had always obeyed their call;
he did so at present, however, with a sense of unusual intention. In due
course his intention was translated into words; before the gentlemen
left the dining-room he respectfully asked his noble host for some
further brief and benevolent hearing.

"What is it you want? Tell me now," the master of his fate replied,
motioning to the rest of the company to pass out and detaining him where
they stood.

Peter's excellent training covered every contingency: he could always be
as concise or as diffuse as the occasion required. Even he himself,
however, was surprised at the quick felicity of the terms in which he
was conscious of conveying that, were it compatible with higher
conveniences, he should extremely like to be transferred to duties in a
more distant quarter of the globe. Indeed, fond as he was of thinking
himself a man of emotions controlled by civility, it is not impossible
that a greater candour than he knew glimmered through Peter's expression
and trembled through his tone as he presented this petition. He had
aimed at a good manner in presenting it, but perhaps the best of the
effect produced for his interlocutor was just where it failed, where it
confessed a secret that the highest diplomacy would have guarded.
Sherringham remarked to the minister that he didn't care in the least
where the place might be, nor how little coveted a post; the further
away the better, and the climate didn't matter. He would only prefer of
course that there should be really something to do, though he would make
the best of it even if there were not. He stopped in time, or at least
thought he did, not to betray his covertly seeking relief from minding
his having been jilted in a flight to latitudes unfavourable to human
life. His august patron gave him a sharp look which for a moment seemed
the precursor of a sharper question; but the moment elapsed and the
question failed to come. This considerate omission, characteristic of a
true man of the world and representing quick guesses and still quicker
indifferences, made our gentleman from that moment his lordship's ardent
partisan. What did come was a goo