“Who is there?  Monsoon won’t go, even if they ask him.  The Paragon was just the fellow for it.  He had his heart in the work.  An immense deal depends on what sort of man we have in Patagonia at the present moment.  If Paraguay gets the better of the Patagonese all Brazil will be in a ferment, and you know how that kind of thing spreads among half-caste Spaniards and Portuguese.  Nobody can interfere but the British Minister.  When I suggested Morton I knew I had the right man if he’d only take it”

“And now he has gone and died!” said Hoffmann.

“And now he has gone and died,” continued Mounser Green. “’I never nursed a dear gazelle,’ and all the rest of it.  Poor Paragon!  I fear he was a little cut about Miss Trefoil.”

“She was down with him the day before he died,” said young Glossop.  “I happen to know that”

“It was before he thought of going to Patagonia that she was at Bragton,” said Currie.

“That’s all you know about it, old fellow,” said the indignant young one.  “She was there a second time, just before his death.  I had it from Lady Penwether who was in the neighbourhood.”

“My dear little boy,” said Mounser Green, “that was exactly what was likely to happen, and he yet may have broken his heart.  I have seen a good deal of the lady lately, and under no circumstances would she have married him.  When he accepted the mission that at any rate was all over.”

“The Rufford affair had begun before that,” said Hoffmann.

“The Rufford affair as you call it,” said Glossop, “was no affair at all.”

“What do you mean by that?” asked Currie.

“I mean. that Rufford was never engaged to her,—­not for an instant,” said the lad, urgent in spreading the lesson which he had received from his cousin.  “It was all a dead take-in.”

“Who was taken in?” asked Mounser Green.

“Well;—­nobody was taken in as it happened.  But I suppose there can’t be a doubt that she tried her best to catch him, and that the Duke and Duchess and Mistletoe, and old Trefoil, all backed her up.  It was a regular plant.  The only thing is, it didn’t come off.”

“Look here, young shaver;”—­this was Mounser Green again; “when you speak of a young lady do you be a little more discreet”

“But didn’t she do it, Green?”

“That’s more than you or I can tell.  If you want to know what I think, I believe he paid her a great deal of attention and then behaved very badly to her.”

“He didn’t behave badly at all,” said young Glossop.

“My dear boy, when you are as old as I am, you will have learned how very hard it is to know everything.  I only say what I believe, and perhaps I may have better ground for believing than you.  He certainly paid her a great deal of attention, and then her friends,—­especially the Duchess,—­went to work.”

“They’ve wanted to get her off their hands these six or eight years,” said Currie.