“So after all the Paragon left her whatever he could leave,” said Currie in the same room at the Foreign Office.  A week had passed since the last conversation, and at this moment Mounser Green was not in the room.

“Oh, dear no,” said young Glossy.  “She doesn’t have Bragton.  That goes to his cousin.”

“That was entailed, Glossy, my boy.”

“Not a bit of it.  Everybody thought he would leave the place to another Morton, a fellow he’d never seen, in one of those Somerset House Offices.  He and this fellow who is to have it, were enemies,—­but he wouldn’t put it out of the right line.  It’s all very well for Mounser to be down on me, but I do happen to know what goes on in that country.  She gets a pot of money, and no end of family jewels; but he didn’t leave her the estate as he might have done.”

At that moment Mounser Green came into the room.  It was rather later than usual, being past one o’clock; and he looked as though he were flurried.  He didn’t speak for a few minutes, but stood before the fire smoking a cigar.  And there was a general silence, there being now a feeling among them that Arabella Trefoil was not to be talked about in the old way before Mounser Green.  At last he spoke himself.  “I suppose you haven’t heard who is to go to Patagonia after all?”

“Is it settled?” asked Currie.

“Anybody we know?” asked Hoffmann.

“I hope it’s no d—­ outsider,” said the too energetic Glossop.

“It is settled; and it is somebody you know; and it is not a d—­ outsider; unless, indeed, he may be considered to be an outsider in reference to that branch of the service.”

“It’s some consul,” said Currie.  “Backstairs from Panama, I’ll bet a crown.”

“It isn’t Backstairs, it isn’t a consul.  Gentlemen, get out your pocket-handkerchiefs.  Mounser Green has consented to be expatriated for the good of his country.”

“You going to Patagonia!” said Currie.  “You’re chaffing,” said Glossop.  “I never was so shot in my life,” said Hoffmann.

“It’s true, my dear boys.”

“I never was so sorry for anything in all my born days,” said Glossop, almost crying.  “Why on earth should you go to Patagonia?”

“Patagonia!” ejaculated Currie.  “What will you do in Patagonia?”

“It’s an opening, my dear fellow,” said Mounser Green leaning affectionately on Glossop’s shoulder.  “What should I do by remaining here?  When Drummond asked me I saw he wanted me to go.  They don’t forget that kind of thing.”  At that moment a messenger opened the door, and the Senator Gotobed, almost without being announced, entered the room.  He had become so intimate of late at the Foreign Office, and his visits were so frequent, that he was almost able to dispense with the assistance of any messenger.  Perhaps Mounser Green and his colleagues were a little tired of him; but yet, after their fashion, they were always civil to him, and remembered, as they were bound to do, that he was one of the leading politicians of a great nation.  “I have secured the hall,” he said at once, as though aware that no news could be so important as the news he thus conveyed.