'Well! that's settled. She'll find the invitations when she comes back; then there'll be the dresses, you know, and all that.' Chris shook his head. 'I am not sure if I do. It is all new. But it is more than kind of you. If I could do anything for you in return----' The unreserved gratitude in his face was sufficiently womanish not to rouse the English distaste to all expression of emotion, though, even so, Jack Raymond put it aside jestingly. 'Thank Lady Arbuthnot, my dear fellow; she'--he paused, a remembrance coming to him--'By the way--you're in, I know, with all the _Voice of India_ scribblers--write for it yourself, don't you? Well, what is the meaning of those hints about the plague policy? What have they got hold of? anything definite?' 'So far as I know, nothing,' began Chris. 'It is, I fear, a regrettable fact that there is seldom good foundation----' Jack Raymond, reins in hand, swung himself into his saddle lightly. 'Yes, thank God! Well! if you should hear of anything, or if you should have a chance of--say, burking anything likely to upset the apple-cart--the times are a trifle ticklish in the city--take your gratitude to me, or rather to Lady Arbuthnot, out in that.' Chris flushed up. 'Surely,' he began volubly, 'it is the bounden duty, as I have just been writing, of the educated portion of the community to leave themselves free for reasonable criticism by supporting Government, wherever possible, by throwing heart and soul----' The Englishman, holding his impatient mount in a grip of iron, looked down with a bored expression. 'No doubt--no doubt; but the body fills a gap better on the whole. Good-bye. I'll see to the invites, and you can drop me a line if you hear anything definite.' CHAPTER VI THE MONEY OF FOOLS 'Finally, sirs,' came a high straining voice as Chris Davenant entered Hâfiz Ahmad's house, 'the educated youngster of India refuses to let his soaring aspirations remain cribbed, cabined, confined, in the cruel shackles of a political despotism without parallel in the whole history of civilisation!' The peroration, though it seemed to afford the speaker much satisfaction, only induced that faint desultory clapping which in England is reserved for prize-days at school; that impersonal applause for the results of diligence which remembers that other pupils have yet to speak. This was the case here, and Chris had barely wedged himself into a chair between a writing-table and a waste-paper basket before another orator was in full swing of adjective.