Perhaps the sudden sense of the utter incongruousness of it all accounted for the silence which followed, as they stood on the balcony, which clung like a swallow's nest to the bare walls. Below them, beyond the courtyard, lay the shadowy arcades of the bazaar and the great pile of the Mori gate. Beyond that again the bricks and sand-heaps of Hodinuggur, with the village creeping up to be crowned by the grass palisades where the potter sat at work.
'Talking of bribes, said Dan absently, after the pause, 'I've often wondered how a fellow feels when he has been informed that her gracious Majesty has no further need of his services. They seldom go beyond that nowadays, but that must be bad enough.'
'Very much so, if the bribe has been insufficient, assented Lewis,
'Mr. Gordon! how can you?' began Rose, pausing, however, at the sight of his satisfied smile.
'You should adopt the sun with the motto "Emergo" as your crest, Miss Tweedie. It would suit both your thoughts and deeds,' he replied teasingly.
'Don't mind him,' put in Dan; 'he always was weak in his grammar, and doesn't know that rise must be the correct present tense of Rose.'
'But, really,' persisted Lewis, when the laugh ended; 'if a man had taken a bribe, the first thought to one of his genre would naturally be if the game was worth the candle. If he hadn't--why, dismissal from the public service is not always misfortune. There is the disgrace, of course, but, personally, I have never been able to understand the sentiment of the thing; it appears to me strained. Half your world, as a rule, dislikes you; it believes you capable of murdering your grandmother at any moment. Yet the fact doesn't distress you. It is inevitable that some people should think ill of you. So why should you care when they invent a definite crime for you to commit? It doesn't affect your friends.'
'Well, I don't know,' said George Keene sturdily. 'That's all very philosophical, but I believe I should shoot myself.'
'No! you wouldn't, old chap; unless you wished people to consider you guilty.'
'This conversation is becoming gruesome,' put in Mrs. Boynton; 'let us change it; though Lewis is right, for Government service seems to me a doubtful blessing----'