A quick flicker of concern passed through Pat. She was always candid with herself, and she knew quite well that, though she did not want to marry him, she regarded John as essentially a piece of personal property. If he had fallen in love with her, that was, of course, a pity: but it would, she realized, be considerably more of a pity if he ever fell in love with someone else. A Johnnie gone out of her life and assimilated into that of another girl would leave a frightful gap. The Mustard Spoon was one of those stuffy, overheated places, but, as she meditated upon this possibility, Pat shivered. "Oh!" she said. The music stopped. The floor emptied. Mr. Molloy and his daughter returned to the table. Hugo remained up in the gallery, in earnest conversation with his old friend, Mr. Fish. III Ronald Overbury Fish was a pink-faced young man of small stature and extraordinary solemnity. He had been at school with Hugo and also at the university. Eton was entitled to point with pride at both of them, and only had itself to blame if it failed to do so. The same remark applies to Trinity College, Cambridge. From earliest days Hugo had always entertained for R. O. Fish an intense and lively admiration, and the thought of being compelled to let his old friend down in this matter of the Hot Spot was doing much to mar an otherwise jovial evening. "I'm most frightfully sorry, Ronnie, old thing," he said immediately the first greetings were over. "I sounded the aged relative this afternoon about that business, and there's nothing doing." "No hope?" "None." Ronnie Fish surveyed the dancers below with a grave eye. He removed the stub of his cigarette from its eleven-inch holder, and recharged that impressive instrument. "Did you reason with the old pest?" "You can't reason with my uncle Lester." "I could," said Mr. Fish. Hugo did not doubt this. Ronnie, in his opinion, was capable of any feat. "Yes, but the only trouble is," he explained, "you would have to do it at long range. I asked if I might invite you down to Rudge and he would have none of it." Ronnie Fish relapsed into silence. It seemed to Hugo, watching him, that that great brain was busy, but upon what train of thought he could not conjecture. "Who are those people you're with?" he asked at length. "The big chap with the fair hair is my cousin John. The girl in green is Pat Wyvern. She lives near us." "And the others? Who's the stately looking bird with the brushed-back hair who has every appearance of being just about to address a gathering of constituents on some important point of policy?" "That's a fellow named Molloy. Thos. G. I met him at the fight. He's an American." "He looks prosperous." "He is not so prosperous, though, as he was before the fight started. I took thirty quid off him." "Your uncle, from what you have told me, is pretty keen on rich men, isn't he?" "All over them."