'The story of those three days' fighting in Valdorado is one of the most rattling things in recent times,' said the Duke.
'Was it not?' said Helena. 'I read every word of it every day, and I did want him to win so much.'
'Nobody could be more sorry that you were disappointed than he, I should imagine,' said Mrs. Selwyn.
'What puzzles me,' said Mr. Selwyn, 'is why when they had got him in their power they didn't shoot him.'
'Ah, you see he was an Englishman by family,' Sir Rupert explained; 'and though, of course, he had changed his nationality, I think the Congressionalists were a little afraid of arousing any kind of feeling in England.'
'As a matter of fact, of course,' said Soame Rivers, 'we shouldn't have dreamed of making any row if they had shot him or hanged him, for the matter of that.'
'You can never tell,' said the Duke. 'Somebody might have raised the Civis Romanus cry——'
'Yes, but he wasn't any longer Civis Romanus,' Soame Rivers objected.
'Do you think that would matter much if a cry was wanted against the Government?' the Duke asked, with a smile.
'Not much, I'm afraid,' said Sir Rupert. 'But whatever their reasons, I think the victors did the wisest thing possible in putting their man on board their big ironclad, the "Almirante Cochrane," and setting him ashore at Cherbourg.