‘Ah--hum. You mean--no matter--I suppose the luckiest hand is not all trumps! The thing is to score the trick--that’s the point, Walpole, to score the trick!’ ‘Up to this, I have not been so fortunate.’ ‘Well, who knows what’s coming! I have just asked the Foreign Office people to give you Guatemala; not a bad thing, as times go.’ ‘Why, my lord, it’s banishment and barbarism together. The pay is miserable! It _is_ far away, and it _is_ not Pall Mall or the Rue Rivoli.’ ‘No, not that. There is twelve hundred for salary, and something for a house, and something more for a secretary that you don’t keep, and an office that you need not have. In fact, it makes more than two thousand; and for a single man in a place where he cannot be extravagant, it will suffice.’ ‘Yes, my lord; but I was presumptuous enough to imagine a condition in which I should not be a single man, and I speculated on the possibility that another might venture to share even poverty as my companion.’ ‘A woman wouldn’t go there--at least, she ought not. It’s all bush life, or something like it. Why should a woman bear that? or a man ask her to do so?’ ‘You seem to forget, my lord, that affections may be engaged, and pledges interchanged.’ ‘Get a bill of indemnity, therefore, to release you: better that than wait for yellow fever to do it.’ ‘I confess that your lordship’s words give me great discouragement, and if I could possibly believe that Lady Maude was of your mind--’ ‘Maude! Maude! why, you never imagined that Lady Maude would leave comfort and civilisation for this bush life, with its rancheros and rattlesnakes. I confess,’ said he, with a bitter laugh, ‘I did not think either of you were bent on being Paul or Virginia.’ ‘Have I your lordship’s permission to ask her own judgment in the matter: I mean with the assurance of its not being biassed by you?’ ‘Freely, most freely do I give it. She is not the girl I believe her if she leaves you long in doubt. But I prejudge nothing, and I influence nothing.’ ‘Am I to conclude, my lord, that I am sure of this appointment?’ ‘I almost believe I can say you are. I have asked for a reply by telegraph, and I shall probably have one to-morrow.’ ‘You seemed to have acted under the conviction that I should be glad to get this place.’ ‘Yes, such was my conclusion. After that fiasco in Ireland you must go somewhere, for a time at least, out of the way. Now as a man cannot die for half-a-dozen years and come back to life when people have forgotten his unpopularity, the next best thing is South America. Bogota and the Argentine Republic have whitewashed many a reputation.’ ‘I will remember your lordship’s wise words.’ ‘Do so,’ said my lord curtly, for he felt offended at the flippant tone in which the other spoke. ‘I don’t mean to say that I’d send the writer of that letter yonder to Yucatan or Costa Rica.’ ‘Who may the gifted writer be, my lord?’ ‘Atlee, Joe Atlee; the fellow you sent over here.’