Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 3.djvu/67

Rh 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. He had received such cards before and he always responded to the invitation: he did so however on the present occasion with a sense of unusual intention. In due course his intention was translated into words: before the gentlemen left the dining-room he took the liberty of asking his noble host if during the next few days there would be three minutes more that he might, in his extreme benevolence, bestow upon him.

"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 Peter in the dining-room.

Peter's excellent training covered every contingency: he could be concise or 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 if it were compatible with higher conveniences he should peculiarly like to be transferred to duties in a more distant quarter of the globe. Indeed though Sherringham was fond of thinking of himself as a man of emotions controlled by training, it is not impossible that there was a greater candour than he knew in the expression of his face and even the slight tremor of his voice as he presented this petition. He had wished extremely that his manner should be good in doing so, but perhaps the best part of it for his interlocutor was just the part in which it failed—in which it confessed a secret that the highest diplomacy would not have confessed. Sherringham remarked to the minister that he didn't care in the least where the