“But I wasn’t suggesting anything awful,” Rex persisted, “and I wasn’t teasing. I only meant Pake would be likely to cause some heartburnings down there. Pake’s bound to be the same old Pake. He can’t change all of a sudden. He’s certain to have half a dozen girls thinking they have him on a string before he was there a week. Before he was there a month he had more than one girl on a string. Somebody’s bound to be jealous. Those Dagoes are a hot-blooded lot.” “Pooh!” Buck cut in, “Pake don’t know enough Portuguese to flirt with any natives and all the Americans and English down there will understand flirting.” “What’s the matter with some Dago being in love with an English girl or an American girl?” Rex persevered; “Pake might cut one out with a girl that speaks English.” I saw that both Susie, who was naturally nervous, and Anna, who had been inseparable from Pake all through their childhood, were wrought up. I tried to intervene. “Nonsense,” I said, “Pake might cut out any number of gallants and never get into any trouble. Rio is as peaceable as Baltimore. To begin with, he can’t flirt with any Brazilian girls, for no Brazilian girl is ever permitted to talk to a young man. Anybody going along the streets can see the fashionable Brazilians making love according to their custom. Toward sunset, when the heat is less fierce, the girls, all dressed up, lean out of the windows of the second floor drawing rooms. Their lovers stand on the other side of the street and look at them. A young man will stand that way two hours or more every afternoon for a year before he asks her father for a girl. That’s the fashion. How is it now, Tom?” “Same way now.” Brundige corroborated me. “Lots of flirtation among the foreign set, though. But no danger of daggers or revenge. Rio is as peaceable as Washington. I never heard of any case of revenge or of jealousy leading to bloodshed. Never heard of a supposed case, except once.” His tone told us all there was a story coming. He was sitting next to Susie and we all hitched our chairs nearer. “What was that, Tom?” Buck asked. The women all looked towards Brundige. Rex lit another cigarette. The rest of us lit fresh cigars. “It was a fellow named Orodoff Guimaraes,” Brundige began. “Guimaraes, in Portuguese, is like Smith in English, only more so. It seems as if half the Fluminenses, as they call the people of Rio, are named Guimaraes. This Orodoff Guimaraes was a cousin and namesake of a wealthy and respected wine-merchant and rather traded on the relationship and identity of the name. He was one of those dandies who swarm in all South American cities, young men with little or no income, a great sense of their own importance, a taste for expensive pleasures, a love of ease and comfort, ungovernable passions, and an insane devotion to the latest fashion in clothes.