"My dear Mr. Varga, pardon me if I trouble you with a question."
Mr. Varga hastened to assure her that he was her most humble servant, and only awaited her commands.
"But this question is very, very important."
Mr. Varga assured her that he was ready for anything in the world; even if her ladyship should require him to leap through the window, he was prepared to do so.
"I am going to ask you a question, to which I require a perfectly sincere answer. You must be perfectly frank towards me. Fancy yourself for the moment my dear father, about to give to me, your daughter, good counsel on the eve of my entering into the world."
She said these words with so much feeling, and in a voice that seemed to come so directly from the bottom of her heart, that Mr. Varga, for the life of him, could not help drawing from the inside pocket
of his dolman a checkered cotton pocket-handkerchief, with which he dried his eyes.
"What is it your ladyship deigns to command?" he inquired, in a voice that sounded as if every syllable he uttered were shod with as tight jackboots as the ones he was himself wearing.
"I want you to be so good as to go through all the names written on this list, one by one, and tell me quite frankly, quite openly, what your opinion is of each one of them, what their dispositions are, how the world regards them, which of them are likely to love one, and which are likely to give one the cold shoulder."
In all his life Mr. Varga had never had to face so rigorous an ordeal.