“That would pass for very good republican doctrine in Jonesville,” I said.  “What a pity you have all so backslidden from your orthodoxies here in India, Bhima Gandharva!  In my native land there is a region where many orange trees grow.  Sometimes, when a tree is too heavily fertilized, it suddenly shoots out in great luxuriance, and looks as if it were going to make oranges enough for the whole world, so to speak.  But somehow, no fruit comes:  it proves to be all wood and no oranges, and presently the whole tree changes and gets sick and good for nothing.  It is a disease which the natives call ‘the dieback.’  Now, it seems to me that when you old Aryans came from—­from—­well, from wherever you did come from—­you branched out at first into a superb magnificence of religions and sentiments and imaginations and other boscage.  But it looks now as if you were really bad off with the dieback.”

It was, however, impossible to perceive that Bhima Gandharva’s smile was like anything other than the same plain full of ripe corn.

LADY ARTHUR EILDON’S DYING LETTER.

I.

Lady Arthur Eildon was a widow:  she was a remarkable woman, and her husband, Lord Arthur Eildon, had been a remarkable man.  He was a brother of the duke of Eildon, and was very remarkable in his day for his love of horses and dogs.  But this passion did not lead him into any evil ways:  he was a thoroughly upright, genial man, with a frank word for every one, and was of course a general favorite.  “He’ll just come in and crack away as if he was ane o’ oorsels,” was a remark often made concerning him by the people on his estates; for he had estates which had been left to him by an uncle, and which, with the portion that fell to him as a younger son, yielded him an ample revenue, so that he had no need to do anything.

What talents he might have developed in the army or navy, or even in the Church, no one knows, for he never did anything in this world except enjoy himself; which was entirely natural to him, and not the hard work it is to many people who try it.  He was in Parliament for a number of years, but contented himself with giving his vote.  He did not distinguish himself.  He was not an able or intellectual man:  people said he would never set the Thames on fire, which was true; but if an open heart and hand and a frank tongue are desirable things, these he had.  As he took in food, and it nourished him without further intervention on his part, so he took in enjoyment and gave it out to the people round him with equal unconsciousness.  Let it not be said that such a man as this is of no value in a world like ours:  he is at once an anodyne and a stimulant of the healthiest and most innocent kind.

As was meet, he first saw the lady who was to be his wife in the hunting-field.  She was Miss Garscube of Garscube, an only child and an heiress.  She was a fast young lady when as yet fastness was a rare development:—­a harbinger of the fast period, the one swallow that presages summer, but does not make it—­and as such much in the mouths of the public.