"No money you'll ever touch would buy my dog's silence, let alone
mine, sir! If you've a letter for the princess, send it along and I'll see
she gets it. If she cares to answer it, I'll see the answer reaches you.
As for dropping hints to the maharajah about my doing little services
for the princess,--a gentleman's a gentleman, and don't need instruction--
nor advice from me. If I was out of a job tomorrow I'd still be a man
on two feet, to be met as such."

A man of indiscretion, and a diplomat, must have fireproof feelings.
As Tess had observed, Samson blenched distinctly, but he recovered
in a second and put in practise some of that opportunism that was his
secret pride, reflecting how a less finished diplomatist would have betrayed
resentment at the snub from an inferior instead of affecting not to notice
it at all. As a student of human nature he decided that Tom Tripe's pride
was the point to take advantage of.

"You're the very man I can trust," he said. "I'm glad we have had this talk.
If ever you receive a small white envelope marked r. s. in the left-hand
bottom corner, see that the princess gets it, and say nothing."

"Trust me, eh?" Tripe muttered as Samson walked away. "You never
trusted your own mother without you had a secret hold over her. I wouldn't
trust you that far!" He spat among the flowers, for Tom could not pretend
to real garden-party manners. "And if she trusts you, letters or no letters,
I'll eat my spurs and saber cold for breakfast."

Then, as if to console himself with proof that some one in the world did
trust him thoroughly, Tom swaggered with a riding-master stride to where
Tess stood talking with a Rajput prince, who had come late and threatened