"It would have been a fine thing for one of you if you could have hooked him," said their brother, as he smoked a final pipe, between midnight and morning, in the untidy little drawing-room in South Belgravia, after an evening with Chaumont. "He's a heavy swell in Cornwall, I can tell you. Plenty of money--fine old place. But there's a girl down there he's sweet upon--a cousin. He's very close; but I caught him kissing and crying over her photograph one night in the Rockies--when our rations had run short, and two of our horses gone dead, and our best guide was down with ague, and there was an idea that we'd lost our track, and should never see England again. That's the only time I ever saw Tregonell sentimental. 'I'm not afraid of death,' he said, 'but I should like to live to see home again, for her sake;' and he showed me the photo--a sweet, fresh, young face, smiling at us with a look of home and home-affection, and we poor beggars not knowing if we should ever see a woman's face again."
"If you knew he was in love with his cousin, what's the use of talking about his marrying us?" asked Mopsy petulantly, speaking of herself and her sister as if they were a firm.
"Oh, there's no knowing," answered Jack, coolly, as he puffed at his meerschaum. "A man may change his mind. Girls with your experience ought to be able to twist a fellow round your little finger. But though you're deuced keen at getting things out of men, you're uncommonly slow at bringing down your bird."
"Look at our surroundings," said Dopsy bitterly. "Could we ever dare to bring a man here; and it is in her own home that a man gets fond of a girl."
"Well, a fellow would have to be very far gone to stand this," Captain Vandeleur admitted, with a shrug of his shoulders, as he glanced round the room, with its blotchy paper, and smoky ceiling, its tawdry chandelier, and dilapidated furniture, flabby faded covers to chairs and sofa, side-table piled with shabby books and accumulated newspapers, the half-pay father's canes and umbrellas in the corner, his ancient slippers by the fender, his easy-chair, with its morocco cover indented with the greasy imprint of his venerable shoulders, and over all the rank odours of yesterday's dinner and stale tobacco-smoke.