Shan is too great a diplomatist to risk his country's new prosperity."

"Prince Shan," Maggie declared, "is the one man in the world I am
longing to meet. He was at Oxford with you, wasn't he, Nigel?"

"For one year only. He went from there to Harvard."

"Tell me what he was like," she begged.

"I have only a hazy recollection of him," Nigel confessed. "He was a
most brilliant scholar and a fine horseman. I can't remember whether he
did anything at games."

"Good-looking?"

"Extraordinarily so. He was very reserved, though, and even in those
days he was far more exclusive than our own royal princes. We all
thought him clever, but no one dreamed that he would become Asia's great
man. I'll tell you all that I can remember about him another time,
Maggie. I'm rather curious about that report of Atcheson's. Have you any
idea what it is about?"

She shook her head.

"None at all. It is in the old Foreign Office cipher and it looks like
gibberish. I only know that the first few lines he transcribed gave dad
the jumps."

"I wonder if he has finished it by now."