what it said.  Then she walked behind her card into the next room, where a young gentleman, reading proofs in his shirt-sleeves, flung himself upon his coat and struggled into it at her approach.  He seemed to have the blackest hair and the softest eyes and the neatest moustache available, all set in a complexion frankly olive, amiable English cut, in amiable Oriental colour, and the whole illumined, when once the coat was on and the collar perfectly turned down, by the liveliest, most engaging smile.  Standing with his head slightly on one side and one hand resting on the table while the other saw that nothing was disarranged between collar and top waistcoat button, he was an interjection-point of imitation and attention.

“The editor of the Chronicle?” Hilda asked with diffident dignity, and very well informed to the contrary.

“Not the editor—­I am sorry to say.”  The confession was delightfully vivid—­in the plentitude of his candour it was plain that he didn’t care who knew that he was sorry he was not the editor.  “In journalistic parlance the sub-editor,” he added.  “Will you be seated, Miss Howe?” and with a tasteful silk pocket handkerchief he whisked the bottom of a chair for her.

“Then you are Mr. Molyneux Sinclair,” Hilda declared.  “You have been pointed out to me on several first nights.  Oh, I know very well where the Chronicle seats are!”

Mr. Sinclair bowed with infinite gratification and tucked the silk handkerchief back so that only a fold was visible.  “We members of the Fourth Estate are fairly well known, I’m afraid, in Calcutta,” he said.  “Personally, I could sometimes wish it were otherwise.  But certainly not in this instance.”

Hilda gave him a gay little smile.  “I suppose the editor,” she said, with a casual glance about the room, “is hammering out his leader for to-morrow’s paper.  Does he write half and do you write half, or how do you manage?”

A seriousness overspread Mr. Sinclair’s countenance, which he nevertheless irradiated, as if he could not help it, with beaming eyes.  “Ah, those are the secrets of the prison-house, Miss Howe.  Unfortunately, it is not etiquette for me to say in what proportion I contribute the leading articles of the Chronicle.  But I can tell you in confidence that if it were not for the editor’s prejudices—­rank prejudices—­it would be a good deal larger.”

“Ah, his prejudices!  Why not be quite frank, Mr. Sinclair, and say that he is just a little tiny bit jealous of his staff.  All editors are, you know.”  Miss Howe shook her head in philosophical deprecation of the peccadillo, and Mr. Sinclair cast a smiling, embarrassed glance at his smart brown leather boot.  The glance was radiant with what he couldn’t tell her as a sub-editor of honour about those cruel prejudices, but he gave it no other medium.

“I’m afraid you know the world, Miss Howe,” he said, with a noble reserve, and that was all.