“No!” I assured him.  “The affair happened in a very dubious sort of place.  I don’t think I shall hear anything more about it unless from Tapilow himself.”

Ralph nodded.

“We will close the chapter,” he said.

“You have no news—­”

“None!” he interrupted me, shortly.  “We will close the chapter.”

So I spoke to him no more on his own affairs.  His servant brought in the letters and papers, poked the fire, and announced that breakfast was ready.

“You will have something, Austen?” he asked.

“I have only had a continental breakfast,” I answered.  “I dare say I can manage to eat something.”

“I have a letter from Dicky,” he remarked, later on.  “Asks me to be civil, if I can, to some people who have been remarkably kind to him out in Brazil.  They have an estate there.”

I nodded.

“Dicky doing all right?” I asked.

“Seems to be,” Ralph answered.

Dicky was our younger brother, and rather a wanderer.

“What is the name of the people who are coming over?” I asked.

“Some odd name,” Ralph answered,—­“Delora, I think.”

Ralph had drawn the Times towards him, and he did not notice my start.  I sat looking at him in blank amazement.

“Ralph!” I said presently.

My brother looked up.

“Have you got Dicky’s letter on you?” I asked.

He passed it over to me.  I skimmed through the first part until I came to the sentence which interested me.

I have been out staying at an awfully fine estate here, right on the Pampas.  It belongs to some people called Delora.  One of the brothers is just off to Europe, on some Government business, and will be in London for a few days with his niece, I expect.  He is going to stay at the Milan Hotel, and it would be awfully good of you if you would look him up, or drop him a line.  They really have been very kind to me out here.

I pushed the letter back to Ralph.

“Have you done anything yet,” I asked, “about this?”

Ralph shook his head.

“I thought you would not mind calling for me,” he remarked.  “I would like to be civil to any one who has done anything for Dicky.  If he shoots, you might take him down to the Court.  Mary’s there, of course, but that would not matter.  There is the whole of the bachelor wing at your disposal.”

I nodded.

“I will look after it for you,” I said.  “You can leave it in my hands.  It is rather an odd thing, but I believe that I have met this man in Paris.”

My brother was not much interested.  I was glad of the excuse to bury myself in the pages of the Daily Telegraph.  Here at last, then, was something definite.  The man Delora was not a fraud.  He was everything that he professed to be—­a wealthy man, without a doubt.  I suddenly began to see things differently.  What a coward I had been to think of running away!  After all, there might be some explanation, even, of that meeting between the girl and Louis.