Hilda stepped out on the landing.  The heavy, regular thud of the presses came up from below.  They were printing the edition that took the world’s news to planters’ bungalows in the jungle of Assam and the lonely policeman on the edge of Manipore.  The smell of the newspaper of to-day and of yesterday, and of a year ago, stood in the air; through an open door she saw the dusty, uneven edges of files of them, piled on the floor.  Three or four messengers squatted beside the wall, with slumbrous heads between their knees.  Occasionally a shout came from the room inside, and one of them, crying “Hazur!” with instant alacrity, stretched himself mightily, loafed upon his feet and went in, emerging a moment later carrying written sheets, with which he disappeared into the regions below.  The staircase took a lazy curve and went up; under it, through an open window, the sun glistened upon the shifting white and green leaves of a pipal tree, and a crow sat on the sill and thrust his grey head in with caws of indignant expostulation.  A Government peon in scarlet and gold ascended the stair at his own pace, bearing a packet with an official seal.  The place, with its ink-smeared walls and high ceilings, spoke between dusty yawns of the languor and the leisure which might attend the manipulation of the business of life, and Hilda paused for an instant to perceive 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 invitation 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 plenitude 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.”