Title: The Grey Lady
Author: Merriman, Henry Seton
Language: English
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THE GREY LADY

BY HENRY SETON MERRIMAN.



     "The dog that snapt the shadow, dropt the bone."


CONTENTS

  BOOK THE FIRST

  I.       TWO IN THE FIELD.
  II.      A MAN DOWN.
  III.     A SEA DOG.
  IV.      PURGATORIO.
  V.       THE VALLEY OF REPOSE.
  VI.      AN ACTOR PASSES OFF THE STAGE.
  VII.     IN THE STREET OF THE PEACE.
  VIII.    THE DEAL.
  IX.      CUT FOR PARTNERS.
  X.       THE GAME OPENS.
  XI.      SHIPS UPON THE SEA.
  XII.     A SHUFFLE.
  XIII.    A CHOICE.
  XIV.     A QUATRE.
  XV.      DON QUIXOTE.
  XVI.     BROKEN.


  BOOK THE SECOND

  I.       BITS OF LIFE.
  II.      A COMPACT.
  III.     BAFFLED.
  IV.      FOR THE HIGHEST BIDDER.
  V.       THE TEAR ON THE SWORD.
  VI.      THE COUNT STANDS BY.
  VII.     A VOYAGE.
  VIII.    A GREAT FIGHT.
  IX.      THE EDITOR'S ROOM.
  X.       THE CURTAIN LOWERS.
  XI.      "MILKSOP".
  XII.     THE END OF THE "CROONAH."
  XIII.    AT D'ERRAHA AGAIN.
  XIV.     THE COUNT'S STORY.



BOOK THE FIRST.



CHAPTER I.   TWO IN THE FIELD.

     Qui n'accepte pas le regret n'accepte pas la vie.

The train technically known as the "Flying Dutchman," tearing through
the plains of Taunton, and in a first-class carriage by themselves,
facing each other, two boys.

One of these boys remembers the moment to this day.  A journey
accomplished with Care for a travelling companion usually adheres to
the wheels of memory until those wheels are still.  Grim Care was with
these boys in the railway carriage.  A great catastrophe had come to
them.  A FitzHenry had failed to pass into her Majesty's Navy.  Back
and back through the generations--back to the days when England had no
navy--she had always been served at sea by a FitzHenry.  Moreover,
there had always been a Henry of that name on the books.  Henry, the
son of Henry, had, as a matter of course, gone down to the sea in a
ship, had done his country's business in the great waters.

There was, if they could have looked at it from a racial point of view,
one small grain of consolation.  The record was not even now
snapped--for Henry had succeeded, Luke it was who had failed.

Henry sat with his back to the engine, looking out over the flat
meadow-land, with some moisture remarkably like a tear in either eye.
The eyes were blue, deep, and dark like the eastern horizon when the
sun is setting over the sea.  The face was brown, and oval, and still.
It looked like a face that belonged to a race, something that had been
handed down with the inherent love of blue water.  It is probable that
many centuries ago, a man with features such as these, with eyes such
as these, and crisp, closely curling hair, had leaped ashore from his
open Viking boat, shouting defiance to the Briton.

This son of countless Henrys sat and thought the world was hollow, with
no joy in it, and no hope, because Luke had failed.

We are told that there shall be two in the field, that the one shall be
taken and the other left.  But we have yet to learn why, in our limited
vision, the choice seems invariably to be mistaken.  We have yet to
learn why he who is doing good work is called from the field, leaving
there the man whose tastes are urban.

Except for the sake of the record--and we cannot really be expected in
these busy times to live for generations past or yet unborn--except for
the record it would have been more expedient that Henry should fail and
Luke succeed.  Everybody knew this.  It was the common talk on board
the Britannia.  Even the examiners knew it. Luke himself was aware of
it.  But there had always been a fatality about Luke.

And now, when it was quite apparent that Luke was a sailor and nothing
else, the Navy would have none of him.  Those who knew him--his kindly
old captain and others--averred that, with a strict and unquestionable
discipline, Luke FitzHenry could be made a first-class officer and a
brilliant sailor.  No one quite understood him, not even his brother
Henry, usually known as Fitz.  Fitz did not understand him now; he had
not understood him since the fatal notice had been posted on the broad
mainmast, of which some may wot.  He did not know what to say, so, like
the wise old Duke, he said nothing.

In the meantime the train raced on.  Every moment brought them nearer
to London and to the Honourable Mrs. Harrington.

Fitz seemed to be realising this, for he glanced uneasily at his
brother, whose morose, sullen face was turned resolutely towards the
window.

"She'll be a fool," he said, "if she does not give you another chance."

"I would not take it," answered Luke mechanically.

He was darker than his brother, with a longer chin and a peculiar twist
of the lips.  His eyes were lighter in colour, and rather too close
together.  A keen observer would have put him down as a boy who in
manhood might go wrong.  The strange thing was that no one could have
hesitated for a moment in selecting Luke as the cleverer of the two.

Fitz paused.  He was not so quick with his tongue as with his limbs. He
knew his brother well enough to foresee the effect of failure. Luke
FitzHenry was destined to be one of those unfortunate men who fail
ungracefully.

"Do not decide in too great a hurry," said Fitz at length, rather
lamely.  "Don't be a fool!"

"No, it has been decided for me by my beastly bad luck."

"It WAS bad luck--deuced bad luck."

They had bought a packet of cigarettes at Exeter, but that outward sign
of manhood lay untouched on the seat beside Fitz.  It almost seemed as
if manhood had come to them both in a more serious form than a
swaggering indulgence in tobacco.

The boys were obviously brothers, but not aggressively twins.  For Luke
was darker than Fitz, and somewhat shorter in stature.

It is probable that neither of them had ever seriously contemplated the
possibility of failure for one and not for the other.  Neither had ever
looked onward, as it were, into life to see himself there without the
other.  The life that they both anticipated was that life on the ocean
wave, of which home-keeping poets sing so eloquently; and it had always
been vaguely taken for granted that no great difference in rank or
success could sever them.  Fitz was too simple-minded, too honest to
himself, to look for great honours in his country's service.  He
mistrusted himself.  Luke mistrusted Providence.

Such was the difference between these two boys--the thin end of a wedge
of years which, spreading out in after days, turned each life into a
path of its own, sending each man inexorably on his separate way.

These two boys were almost alone in the world.  Their mother had died
in giving them birth.  Their father, an old man when he married,
reached his allotted span when his sons first donned Her Majesty's
brass buttons, and quietly went to keep his watch below. Discipline had
been his guiding star through life, and when Death called him he obeyed
without a murmur, trusting confidently to the Naval Department in the
first place, and the good God in the second, to look after his boys.

That the late Admiral FitzHenry had sorely misplaced his confidence in
the first instance was a fact which the two boys were now called upon
to face alone in their youthful ignorance of the world.  Fitz was
uneasily conscious of a feeling of helplessness, as if some
all-powerful protector had suddenly been withdrawn.  Their two lives
had been pre-committed to the parental care of their country, and now
it almost took their breath away to realise that Luke had no such
protector.

His was the pride that depreciates self.  During the last twenty-four
hours Fitz had heard him boast of his failure, holding it up with a
singularly triumphant sneer, as if he had always distrusted his destiny
and took a certain pleasure in verifying his own prognostications.
There are some men who find a satisfaction in bad luck which good
fortune could never afford them.

In a large house in Grosvenor Gardens two ladies were at that same
moment speaking of the FitzHenrys.  It was quite easy to see that the
smaller lady of the two was the mistress of the house, as also of that
vague abstract called the situation.  She sat in the most comfortable
chair, which was, by the way, considerably too spacious for her, and
there was a certain aggressive sense of possession about her attitude
and manner.

Had she been a man, one would have said at once that here was a nouveau
riche, ever heedful of the fact that the big room and all the
appurtenances thereof were the fruits of toil and perseverance. There
was a distinct suggestion of self-manufacture about Mrs.
Harrington--distinct, that is to say, to the more subtle-minded. For
she was not vulgar, neither did she boast.  But the expression of her
keen and somewhat worldly countenance betokened the intention of
holding her own.

The Honourable Mrs. Harrington was not only beautifully dressed, but
knew how to wear her clothes en grande dame.

"Yes," she was saying, "Luke has failed to pass off the Britannia. It
is a rare occurrence.  I suppose the boy is a fool."

Mrs. Harrington was rather addicted to the practice of calling other
people names.  If the butler made a mistake she dubbed him an idiot at
once.  She did not actually call her present companion, Mrs.
Ingham-Baker, a fool, possibly because she considered the fact too
apparent to require note.

Mrs. Ingham-Baker, stout and cringing, smoothed out the piece of silken
needlework with which she moved through life, and glanced at her
companion.  She wanted to say the right thing.  And Mrs. Harrington was
what the French call "difficult."  One could never tell what the right
thing might be.  The art of saying it is, moreover, like an ear for
music, it is not to be acquired.  And Mrs. Ingham-Baker had not been
gifted thus.

"And yet," she said, "their father was a clever man--as I have been
told."

"By whom?" inquired Mrs. Harrington blandly.

Mrs. Ingham-Baker paused in distress.

"I wonder who it was," she pretended to reflect.

"So do I," snapped Mrs. Harrington.

Mrs. Ingham-Baker's imagination was a somewhat ponderous affair, and,
when she trusted to it, it usually ran her violently down a steep
place.  She concluded to say nothing more about the late Admiral
FitzHenry.

"The boy," said Mrs. Harrington, returning to the hapless Luke, "has
had every advantage.  I suppose he will try to explain matters when he
comes.  I could explain it in one word--stupidity."

"Perhaps," put in Mrs. Ingham-Baker nervously, "the brains have all
gone to the other brother, Henry.  It is sometimes so with twins."

Mrs. Harrington laughed rather derisively.

"Stupid woman to have twins," she muttered.

This was apparently one of several grievances against the late Mrs.
FitzHenry.

"They have a little money of their own, have they not?" inquired Mrs.
Ingham-Baker, with the soft blandness of one for whom money has
absolutely no attraction.

"About enough to pay their washerwoman."

There was a pause, and then Mrs. Ingham-Baker heaved a little sigh.

"I am sure, dear," she said, "that in some way you will be rewarded for
your great kindness to these poor orphan boys."

She shook her head wisely, as if reflecting over the numerous cases of
rewarded virtue which had come under her notice, and the action made
two jet ornaments in her cap wobble, in a ludicrous manner, from side
to side.

"That may be," admitted the lady of the house, "though I wish I felt as
sure about it as you do."

"But then," continued Mrs. Ingham-Baker, in a low and feeling tone,
"you always were the soul of generosity."

The "soul of generosity" gave an exceedingly wise little smile--almost
as if she knew better--and looked up sharply towards the door.  At the
same moment the butler appeared.

"Mr. Pawson, ma'am," he said.

The little nod with which this information was received seemed to
indicate that Mr. Pawson had been expected.

Beneath her black curls Mrs. Ingham-Baker's beady eyes were very much
on the alert.

"In the library, James," said Mrs. Harrington--and the two jet
ornaments bending over the silken needlework gave a little throb of
disappointment.

"Mr. Pawson," announced the lady of the house, "is the legal light who
casts a shadow of obscurity over my affairs."

And with that she left the room.

As soon as the door was closed Mrs. Ingham-Baker was on her feet. She
crossed the room to where her hostess's key-basket and other belongings
stood upon a table near the window.  She stood looking eagerly at these
without touching them.  She even stooped down to examine the address of
an envelope.

"Mr. Pawson!" she said, in a breathless whisper.  "Mr.  Pawson--what
does that mean?  Can she be going to alter her--no!  But--yes, it may
be!  Perhaps Susan knows."

Mrs. Ingham-Baker then rang the bell twice, and resumed her seat.

Presently an aged servant came into the room.  It was easy to see at a
glance that she was a very old woman, but the years seemed to weigh
less on her mind than on her body.

"Yes," she said composedly.

"Oh--eh, Susan," began Mrs. Ingham-Baker almost cringingly.  "I rang
because I wanted to know if a parcel has come for me--a parcel of
floss-silk--from that shop in Buckingham Palace Road, you know."

"If it had come," replied Susan, with withering composure, "it would
have been sent up to you."

"Yes, yes, of course I know that, Susan.  But I thought that perhaps it
might have been insufficiently addressed or something--that you or Mary
might have thought that it was for Mrs. Harrington."

"She don't use floss silks," replied the imperturbable Susan.

"I was just going to ask her about it, when she was called away by some
one.  I think she said that it was her lawyer."

"Yes, Mr. Pawson."

Susan's manner implied--very subtly and gently--that her place in this
pleasant house was more assured than that of Mrs. Ingham-Baker, and
perhaps that stout diplomatist awoke to this implication, for she
pulled herself up with considerable dignity.

"I hope that nothing is wrong," she said, in a tone that was intended
to disclaim all intention of discussing such matters with a menial.  "I
should be sorry if Mrs. Harrington was drawn into any legal difficulty;
the law is so complicated."

Susan was engaged in looking for a speck of dust on the mantelpiece,
not for its own intrinsic value, but for the sake of Mary's future. She
had apparently no observation of value to offer upon the vexed subject
of the law.

"I was rather afraid," pursued Mrs. Ingham-Baker gravely, "that Mrs.
Harrington might be unduly incensed against that poor boy, Luke
FitzHenry; that in a moment of disappointment, you know, she might be
making some--well, some alteration in her will to the detriment of the
boy."

Susan stood for a moment in front of the lady, with a strange little
smile of amusement among the wrinkles of her face.

"Yes, that may be," she said, and quietly left the room.



CHAPTER II.  A MAN DOWN.

     Caress the favourites, avoid the unfortunate, and trust nobody.

The atmosphere of Mrs. Harrington's drawing-room seemed to absorb the
new-found manhood of the two boys, for they came forward shyly,
overawed by the consciousness of their own boots, by the conviction
that they carried with them the odour of cigarette smoke and failure.

"Well, my dears," said the Honourable Mrs. Harrington, suddenly
softened despite herself by the sight of their brown young faces.
"Well, come here and kiss me."

All the while she was vaguely conscious that she was surprising herself
and others.  She had not intended to treat them thus.  Mrs. Harrington
was a woman who had a theory of life--not a theory to talk about, but
to act upon.  Her theory was that "heart" is all nonsense.  She looked
upon existence here below as a series of contracts entered into with
one's neighbour for purposes of mutual enjoyment or advantage.  She
thought that life could be put down in black and white.  Which was a
mistake.  She had gone through fifty years of it without discovering
that for the sake of some memory--possibly a girlish one--hidden away
behind her cold grey eyes, she could never be sure of herself in
dealing with man or boy whose being bore the impress of the sea.

The strange thing was that she had never found it out.  We speak
pityingly of animals that do not know their own strength.  Which of us
knows his own weakness?  There was a man connected with Mrs.
Harrington's life, one of the contractors in black and white, who had
found out this effect of a brown face and a blue coat upon a woman
otherwise immovable.  This man, Cipriani de Lloseta, who contemplated
life, as it were, from a quiet corner of the dress circle, kept his
knowledge for his own use.

Fitz and Luke obeyed her invitation without much enthusiasm.  They were
boyish enough to object to kissing on principle.  They then shook hands
awkwardly with Mrs. Ingham-Baker, and drifted together again with that
vague physical attraction which seems to qualify twins for double
harness on the road of life.  There was trouble ahead of them; and
without defining the situation, like soldiers surprised, they
instinctively touched shoulders.

It was the psychological moment.  There was a little pause, during
which Mrs. Harrington seemed to stiffen herself, morally and
physically.  Had she not stiffened herself, had she only allowed
herself, as it were, to go--to call Luke to her and comfort him and
sympathise with him--it would have altered every life in that room, and
others outside of it.  Even blundering, cringing, foolish Mrs.
Ingham-Baker would have acted more wisely, for she would have followed
the dictates of an exceedingly soft, if shallow, heart.

"I had hoped for a more satisfactory home-coming than this," said Mrs.
Harrington in her hardest voice.  When she spoke in this tone there was
the faintest suggestion of a London accent.

Fitz made a little movement, a step forward, as if she had been
unconsciously approaching the brink of some danger, and he wished to
warn her.  The peculiar twist in Luke's lips became momentarily more
visible, and he kept his deep, despondent eyes fixed on the speaker's
face.

There are two kinds of rich women.  The one spends her money in doing
good, the other pays it away to gratify her love of power.  Of the
Honourable Mrs. Harrington it was never reported that she was lavish in
her charities.

"I think," she said, "that I ought to tell you that I have been paying
the expenses of your education almost entirely.  I was in no way bound
to do so.  I took charge of you at your father's death because
I--because he was a true friend to me.  I do not grudge the money, but
in return I expected you to work hard and get on in your profession."

She stiffened herself with a rustling sound of silk, proudly conscious
of injured virtue, full of the charity that exacteth a high interest.

"We did our best," replied Fitz, with a simple intrepidity which rather
spoilt the awesomeness of the situation.

"I am not speaking to you," returned the lady.  "You have worked and
have passed your examination satisfactorily.  You are not clever--I
know that; but you have managed to get into the Navy, where your father
was before you, and your grandfather before him.  I have no doubt you
will give satisfaction to your superior officers.  I was talking to
Luke."

"We all knew that," said Luke, in a dangerous voice, which trite
observation she chose to ignore.

"You have had equal advantages," pursued the dispenser of charity. "I
have shown no favour; I have treated you alike.  It had been my
intention to do so all your lives and after my death."

Mrs. Ingham-Baker was so interested at this juncture that she leant
forward with parted lips, listening eagerly.  The Honourable Mrs.
Harrington allowed herself the plebeian pleasure of returning the stare
with a questioning glance which broke off into a little laugh.

"Have you," she continued, addressing Luke directly, "any reason to
offer for your failure--beyond the usual one of bad luck?"

Luke looked at her in a lowering way and made no reply.  Had Mrs.
Harrington been a poor woman, she would have recognised that the boy
was at the end of his tether.  But she had always been surrounded--as
such women are--by men, and more especially by women, who would swallow
any insult, any insolence, so long as it was gilded.  The world had, in
fact, accepted the Honourable Mrs. Harrington because she could afford
to gild herself.

"It was bad luck, and nothing else," burst out Fitz, heedless of her
sarcastic tones.  "Luke is a better sailor than I am.  But he always
was weak in his astronomy, and it all turned on astronomy."

"I should imagine it all turned on stupidity," said Mrs. Harrington.

"I'm stupid, if you like," said Fitz; "Luke isn't.  Luke is clever; ask
any chap on board!"

"I do not need to ask any chap on board," said Mrs. Harrington.  "My
own common sense tells me that he is clever.  He has proved it."

"It's like a woman--to hit a fellow when he's down," said Luke, with
his hands deep in his pockets.

He turned to Mrs. Ingham-Baker for sympathy in this sentiment, and that
soft-hearted lady deemed it expedient to turn hastily away, avoiding
his glance, denying all partisanship.

Mrs. Ingham-Baker was not a person given to the disguise of her own
feelings.  She was plausible enough to the outer world.  To herself she
was quite frank, and hardly seemed to recognise this as the event she
had most desired.  It is to be presumed that her heart was like her
physical self, a large, unwieldy thing, over which she had not a proper
control.  The organ mentioned had a way of tripping her up.  It tripped
her now, and she quite forgot that this quarrel was precisely what she
had wanted for years.  She had looked forward to it as the
turning-point in her daughter Agatha's fortunes.

Mrs. Ingham-Baker had, in fact, wondered more than a thousand times why
the Honourable Mrs. Harrington should do all for the FitzHenrys and
nothing for Agatha.  She did not attempt to attribute reasons. She knew
her sex too well for that.  She merely wondered, which means that she
cherished a question until it grew into a grievance. The end of it she
knew would be a quarrel.  This might not come until the FitzHenrys
should have grown to man's estate and man's privilege of quarrelling
with his female relatives about the youthful female relative of some
other person.  But it would come, surely.  Mrs. Ingham-Baker, the
parasite, knew her victim, Mrs. Harrington, well enough to be sure of
that.

And now that this quarrel had arisen--much sooner than she could have
hoped--providentially brought about by an astronomical
examination-paper, Mrs. Ingham-Baker was forced to face the humiliating
fact that she felt sorry for Luke.

It would have been different had Agatha been present, but that
ingenious maiden was at school at Brighton.  Had her daughter been in
the room, Mrs. Ingham-Baker's motherly instinct would have narrowed
itself down to her.  But in the absence of her own child, Luke's sorry
plight appealed to that larger maternal instinct which makes good women
in unlikely places.

Mrs. Ingham-Baker was, however, one of the many who learn to curb the
impulse of a charitable intention.  She looked out of the window, and
pretended not to notice that the culprit had addressed his remark to
her.  To complete this convenient deafness she gave a simulated little
cough of abstraction, which entirely gave her away.

Mrs. Harrington chose to ignore Luke's taunt.

"And," she inquired sweetly, "what do you intend to do now?"

Quite suddenly the boy turned on her.

"I intend," he cried, "to make my own life--whatever it may be.  If I
am starving I will not come to you.  If half-a-crown would save me, I
would rather die than borrow it from you.  You think that you can buy
everything with your cursed money.  You can't buy me.  You can't buy a
FitzHenry.  You--you can't--"

He gave a little sob, remembered his new manhood--that sudden, complete
manhood which comes of sorrow--pulled himself up, and walked to the
door.  He opened it, turned once and glanced at his brother, and passed
out of the room.

So Luke FitzHenry passed out into his life--a life which he was to make
for himself.  Passionate--quick to love, to hate, to suffer; deep in
his feeling, susceptible to ridicule or sarcasm--an orphan. The stairs
were dark as he went down them.

Mrs. Harrington gave a little laugh as the door closed behind him. She
had always been able to repurchase the friendship of her friends.

Fitz made a few steps towards the door before her voice arrested him.
"Stop!" she cried.

He paused, and the old sense of discipline that was in his blood made
him obey.  He thought that he would find Luke upstairs on the bed with
his face buried in his folded arms, as he had found him a score of
times during their short life.

"I think you are too hard on him," he answered hotly.  "It is bad
enough being ploughed, without having to stand abuse afterwards."

"My dear," said Mrs. Harrington, "just you come here and sit beside me.
We will leave Luke to himself for a little.  It is much better. Let him
think it out alone."

What was there in this fair-haired boy's demeanour, voice, or being
that appealed to Mrs. Harrington, despite her sterner self?

So Fitz was pacified by the lady's gentler manner, and consented to
remain.  He made good use of his time, pleading Luke's cause,
explaining his bad fortune, and modestly disclaiming any credit to
himself for having succeeded where his brother failed.  But all the
while the boy was restless, eager to get away and run upstairs to Luke,
who he felt sure was living years in every moment, as children do in
those griefs which we take upon ourselves to call childish.

At last he rose.

"May I go now?" he asked.

"Yes, if you like.  But do not bring Luke to me until he is prepared to
apologise for his ingratitude and rudeness."

"What a dear boy he is!" ejaculated Mrs. Ingham-Baker almost before the
door was closed.  "So upright and honest and straightforward."

"Yes," answered Mrs. Harrington, with a sigh of anger.

"He will be a fine man," continued Mrs. Ingham-Baker.  "I shall die
quite happy if my Agatha marries such a man as Henry will be."

Mrs. Harrington glanced at her voluminous friend rather critically.

"You do not look like dying yet," she said.

Mrs. Ingham-Baker put her head on one side and looked resigned.

"One never knows," she answered.  "It is a great responsibility,
Marian, to have a daughter."

"I should imagine, from what I have seen of Agatha, that the child is
quite capable of taking care of herself."

"Yes," answered the fond mother, "she is intelligent.  But a girl is so
helpless in the world, and when I am gone I should feel happier if I
knew that my child had a good husband, such as Fitz, to take care of
her."

Neither of these ladies being of the modern school of feminine
learning, the vague theology underlying this remark was allowed to pass
unnoticed.

Mrs. Harrington drummed with her thin wrinkled fingers on the arm of
her chair, and waited with a queer anticipatory little smile for her
friend to proceed.

"But, of course," continued Mrs. Ingham-Baker, blundering into the
little feminine snare, "a naval man can scarcely marry.  They are
always so badly off.  I suppose poor Fitz will not be able to support a
wife until he is quite middle-aged."

"That remains to be seen," said Mrs. Harrington, with a gleam in her
hard grey eyes, and Mrs. Ingham-Baker pricked her finger.

"I am sure," said the latter lady unctuously, when she had had time to
think it out, "I am sure I should be content for her to live very
quietly if I only knew that she had married a good man.  I always say
that riches do not make happiness."

"Yes, a number of people say that," answered Mrs. Harrington, and at
the same moment Fitz burst into the room.

"Aunt Marian," he cried, "he has gone!"

"Who has gone?" asked the lady of the house coldly.  "Please close the
door."

"Luke!  He has gone!  He went straight out of the house, and the butler
does not know where he went to!  It is all your fault, Aunt Marian; you
had no right to speak to him like that!  You know you hadn't.  I am
going to look for him."

"Now, do not get excited," said Mrs. Harrington soothingly.  "Just come
here and listen to me.  Luke has behaved very badly.  He has been idle
and stubborn on board the Britannia.  He has been rude and ungrateful
to me."

She found she had taken the boy's hand, and she dropped it suddenly, as
if ashamed of showing so much emotion.

"I am not going to have my house upset by the tantrums of a
bad-tempered boy.  It is nearly dinner time.  Luke is sure to come
back. If he is not back by the time we have finished dinner I will send
one of the men out to look for him.  He is probably sulking in some
corner of the gardens."

Seeing that Fitz was white with anxiety, she forgot herself so much as
to draw him to her again.

"Now, Fitz," she said, "you must obey me and leave me to manage Luke in
my own way.  I know best.  Just go and dress for dinner.  Luke will
come back--never fear."

But Luke did not come back.



CHAPTER III.  A SEA DOG.

     There is one that slippeth in his speech, but not from his
heart.

The glass door of the dining-room of the Hotel of the Four Nations at
Barcelona was opened softly, almost nervously, by a shock-headed little
man, who peered into the room.

One of the waiters stepped forward and drew out a chair.

"Thank ye--thank ye," said the new-comer, in a thick though pleasant
voice.

He looked around, rather bewildered--as if he had never seen a table
d'hote before.  It almost appeared as if a doubt existed in his mind
whether or not he was expected to go and shake hands with some one
present, explaining who he was.

As, however, no one appeared to invite this confidence he took the
chair offered and sat gravely down.

The waiter laid the menu at his side, and the elderly diner, whose face
and person bespoke a seafaring life, gazed politely at it.  He was
obviously desirous of avoiding hurting the young man's feelings, but
the card puzzled as much as it distressed him.

Observing with the brightest of blue eyes the manners and customs of
his neighbours, the old sailor helped himself to a little wine from the
decanter set in front of him, and filled up the glass with water.

The waiter drew forward a small dish of olives and another containing
slices of red sausage of the thickness, consistency, and flavour of a
postage stamp.  The Englishman looked dubiously at these delicacies and
shook his head--still obviously desirous of giving no offence.  Soup
was more comprehensible, and the sailor consumed his portion with a
non-committing countenance.  But the fish, which happened to be of a
Mediterranean savour--served in little lumps--caused considerable
hesitation.

"Is it slugs?" inquired the mariner guardedly--as if open to
conviction--in a voice that penetrated half the length of the table.

The waiter explained in fluent Castilian the nature of the dish.

"I want to know if it's slugs," repeated the sailor, with a stout
simplicity.

One or two commercial travellers, possessing a smattering of English,
smiled openly, and an English gentleman seated at the side of the
inquirer leant gravely towards him.

"That is a preparation of fish," he explained.  "You won't find it at
all bad."

"Thank you, sir," replied the old man, helping himself with an air of
relief which would have been extremely comic had it been shorn of its
pathos.  "I am afraid," he went on confidentially, "of gettin' slugs to
eat.  I'm told that they eat them in these parts."

"This," replied the other, with stupendous gravity, "is not the slug
season.  Besides, if you did get 'em, I dare say you would be
pleasantly surprised."

"Maybe, maybe!  Though I don't hold by foreign ways."

Such was the beginning of a passing friendship between two men who had
nothing in common except their country; for one was a peer of the
realm, travelling in Spain for the transaction of his own private
affairs, or possibly for the edification of his own private mind, and
the other was Captain John Thomas Bontnor, late of the British
mercantile service.

Being a simple-minded person, as many seamen are, Captain Bontnor
sought to make himself agreeable.

"This is the first time," he said, "that I have set foot in Spain,
though I've heard the language spoken, having sailed in the Spanish
Main, and down to Manilla one voyage likewise.  It is a
strange-sounding language, I take it--a lot of jabbering and not much
sense."

He spoke somewhat slowly, after the manner of one who had always had a
silent tongue until grey hairs came to mellow it.

The young man, his hearer, looked slightly distressed, as if he was
suppressing some emotion.  He was rather a vacuous-looking young
man--startlingly clean as to countenance and linen.  He was shaven, and
had he not been distinctly a gentleman, he might have been a groom.  He
apparently had a habit of thrusting forward his chin for the purpose of
scratching it pensively with his forefinger.  This elegant trick
probably indicated bewilderment, or, at all events, a slight
mystification--he had recourse to it now--on the question of the
Spanish language.

"Well," he answered gravely, "if you come to analyse it, I dare say
there is as much sense in it as in other languages--when you know it,
you know."

"Yes," murmured the captain, with a glowing sense of satisfaction at
his own conversational powers.  He felt he was becoming quite a society
man.

"But," pursued the hereditary legislator, "it's tricky--deuced tricky.
The nastiest lot of irregular verbs I've come across yet. Still, I get
along all right.  Worst of it is, you know, that when I've got a
sentence out all right with its verbs and things, I'm not in a fit
state to catch the answer."

"Knocks you on to your beam-ends," suggested Captain Bontnor.

"Yes."

Lord Seahampton settled his throat more comfortably in his spotless
collar, and proceeded to help himself to a fourth mutton cutlet.

"Staying here long?" he inquired.

"No, not long," answered Captain Bontnor slowly, as if meditating; then
suddenly he burst into his story.  "You see, sir," he said, "I'm
getting on in years, and I'm not quite the build for foreign travel.
It sort of flurries me.  I'm a bit past it.  I'm not here for pleasure,
you know."

This seemed to have the effect of sending Lord Seahampton off into a
brown study--not apparently of great value so far as depth of thought
was concerned.  He looked as if he were wondering whether he himself
was in Barcelona for pleasure or not.

"No," he murmured encouragingly,

"It is like this," pursued Captain Bontnor, confidentially.  "My
sister, Amelia Ann, married above her."

"Very much to her credit," said Lord Seahampton, with a stolid face and
a twinkle in his eye.  "And--"

"Died."

"Dear, dear!"

"Yes," pursued the captain, "she died nineteen years ago, leaving a
little girl.  He's dead now--Mr. Challoner.  He's my brother-in-law,
but I call him Mr. Challoner, because he's above me."

"I trust he is," said Lord Seahampton, cheerfully, with a glance at the
painted ceiling.  "I trust he is."

The captain chuckled.  "I mean in a social way," he explained.  "And
now he's dead, his daughter Eve is left quite alone in the world, and
she telegraphed for me.  She is living in the Island of Majorca."

"Ah!"

The kindly old blue eyes flashed round on his companion's face.

"Do you know it?"

The peer thrust forward his chin and spoilt what small claims he had to
good looks.

"No; I've heard of it, though.  I know of a wom--a lady, who has large
estates there--a Mrs. Harrington."

"The Honourable Mrs. Harrington is a sort of relation of my niece's,
Miss Challoner.  I call her Miss Challoner, although she is my niece,
because she is above me."

His lordship glanced at the ceiling again.

"I mean she is a lady.  And I'm going to Majorca to fetch her.  At
least, I'm trying to get there, but I cannot somehow find out about the
boat.  They're a bit irregular, it seems, and this stupid jabbering of
theirs does flurry me so.  Now, what's this?   Eh? Pudding, is it?
Well, it doesn't look like it.  No, thank ye!"

The poor old man was soon upset by insignificant trifles, and after he
had given way to a little burst of petulance like this, he had a
strange, half pathetic way of staring straight in front of him for a
few seconds, as if collecting himself again.

It happened that Lord Seahampton was a good-natured young man, with
rather a soft heart, such as many horsey persons possess.  Something in
Captain Bontnor touched him; some simple British quality which he was
pleased to meet with, thus, in a foreign land.

"Look here," he said, "I'll go out with you afterwards and find out all
about the boat, take your ticket, and fix the whole thing up."

"I'm sure you're very kind," began the old sailor hesitatingly.  He
fumbled at his necktie for a moment with unsteady, weather-beaten
hands.  "But I shouldn't like to trespass on your time.  I take it
you're here for pleasure?"

Lord Seahampton smiled.

"Yes, I'm here for pleasure; that's what I'm in the world for."

Still Captain Bontnor hesitated.

"You might meet some of your friends," he began tentatively, "in the
streets, you know."  He paused and looked down at his own hands; he
turned one palm up, showing the faint tattoo on the wrist.  "I'm only a
rough seafaring man," he went on.  "They might think it strange--might
wonder whom you had picked up."

The spotless collar seemed to be very uncomfortable.

"I've always made a practice," mumbled Lord Seahampton, rather
incoherently, "of letting my friends think what they damned well
please.  May I ask your name?"

"Bontnor's my name.  Captain Bontnor, at your service."

"My name's Seahampton."

Captain Bontnor turned and looked at him.

"Yes, I'm Lord Seahampton."

"Oh!" ejaculated Captain Bontnor, under his breath.  His social
facilities did not quite rise to an occasion like this.

"As soon as you've finished," went on his companion rather hurriedly,
"we'll go out and look up these steamer people.  Miss Challoner will be
anxious for you to get there as soon as you can."

"Yes, yes!"

The captain laid aside his napkin and began to show signs of getting
flurried again.

"Her name is Eve," he said, in the hurried way which was rather
pathetic.  "Now, I wonder what I should call her.  Poor young thing! if
she's distressed about her father's death--which is only natural, I'm
sure--it would sound a bit chilly like to call her Miss Challoner.
What do you think, Mr.--eh--er--Lord--sir?"

"Well, I think I should call her Eve--it's a pretty name--and take her
by the hand, and--yes, I think I'd kiss her.  Especially if she was a
nice-looking girl," he added for his own personal edification as he
preceded his companion into the hall.

He was fumbling in the tail pocket of his short tweed coat as he went.
In the hall he turned.

"Got anything to smoke?" he asked, in his most abrupt manner, as if the
cut of his collar did not allow of verbosity.

The old man shyly produced some cigars in a leather case, which had
never been of great value, even in the far-off days of its youth.

"I hardly like to offer them to you," he said slowly.  "T--they're not
expensive, and I couldn't explain to the young woman what I wanted."

"Rather like the look of them," said Lord Seahampton, taking one and
cutting the end off with a certain show of eagerness.  This young man's
reputation for personal bravery was a known quantity on the
hunting-field.  "Old sailors," he continued, "generally know good
tobacco."

And all the while he had half-a-dozen of the best Havanas in his
pocket.  Some instinct, which he was much too practical to define, and
possibly too stupid to detect, told him that this was one of those
occasions where it is much more blessed to receive than to give.

"And so," continued Captain Bontnor, as they were walking down the
shady side of that noisiest street in the world, the Rambla, "and so
you would just call her Eve, if you was me?"

"I should."

"Remember that she is a lady, you know.  Quite a lady."

"I am remembering that," replied the peer stolidly; "that's why I am of
the opinion just expressed."

Captain Bontnor gave a little sigh of relief, as if one of his many
difficulties had been removed.  At the same time he glanced furtively
towards the inexpensive cigar, which was affording distinct if somewhat
exaggerated enjoyment.

Together they walked down the broad street and turned along the quay.
And here Captain Bontnor found himself talking quite easily and affably
about palm-trees and tramways, and other matters of local interest, to
the first peer whom he had ever seen in the flesh.

Out of sheer good nature, and with a vague question in his mind as to
whether Miss Challoner knew what sort of help she had called in, Lord
Seahampton obtained the necessary information--no easy matter in this
country--and took the necessary ticket.  Ticket and information alike
were obtained from a grave gentleman who smoked a cigarette, and did
the honours of his little office as if it had been a palace--showing no
desire to sell the ticket, and taking payment as if he were conferring
a distinct favour.

The steamer left that same afternoon, and Lord Seahampton sent his
protege back rejoicing to the hotel to pack up.  Then the youthful peer
bestowed the remainder of the cheap cigar on an individual in reduced
circumstances and lighted one of his own.  He was quite unconscious of
having done a good action.  Such actions are supposed to bring their
own reward, but experience suggests that it is best not to count upon
anything of a tangible nature.



CHAPTER IV.  PURGATORIO.

     Like lutes of angels, touched so near
     Hell's confines, that the damned can hear.

Time:  Five o'clock in the afternoon.  Five o'clock, that is to say, by
the railway time.  There is another time in Barcelona--the town time,
to wit--which differs from the hour of the iron road by thirty minutes
or thereabouts.  But then the town time is Spanish, that is to say that
no one takes any notice of it.  For into Spanish life time comes but
little.  If one wishes to catch a train--but, by the way, in Spain we
do not catch, we take the train--a subtle difference--if then we wish
to take the train, we arrive at the station three-quarters of an hour
before the time indicated for departure, and there we make our
arrangements with due dignity.

Place:  The Rambla, which for those who speak alien tongues has an
Arabic sound, and tells us that this, the finest promenade in the
world, was once a sandy river-bed.  Here now the grave caballero
promenades himself from early morning to an eve that knows no dew.

Priest and peasant, the great lady and the gentleman who sells one a
glass of water for a centimo, brush past each other.  The great lady is
dressed in black, as all Spanish ladies are, and on her head she wears
the long-lived mantilla, which will last our time and the time of our
grandsons.  The humbler women-folk wear bright handkerchiefs in place
of the mantilla; in dress they affect bright colours.

With the sterner sex, the line of demarcation is equally distinct.
There is the man who wears the peasant's blouse, and the man who wears
the cloak.

It is with one of the latter that we have to deal--a tall, grave man,
with quiet eyes and a long, pointed chin.  The air is chilly, and this
promenader's black cloak is thrown well over the shoulder, displaying
the bright-coloured lining of velvet, which is all the relief the
Spaniard allows his sombre self.

The caballero's face is brown, as of one whose walk is not always
beneath the shady trees.  The expression of it is chastened.  One sees
the history of a country in the faces of its men.  In this there is the
history of a past, it is the face of a man living in a bygone day.  He
notes the interest of the moment with grave surprise, but his life is
behind him.

This man has the Spaniard's thoughtful interest in a trifle.  He pauses
to note the number of the sparrows, as thick as leaves upon the trees.
He carefully unfolds his cloak, gives the loose end a little shake, and
casts it skilfully over his shoulder, so that it falls across his back,
and, hanging there, displays the bright lining.  He pauses to watch the
result of an infantile accident. The baby picks itself up and brushes
the dust from its diminutive frock with all the earnestness of early
youth.  And the cavalier walks on.

All this with a contemplative grandeur of demeanour worthy of larger if
not better things.

In the roadway at the side of the broad promenade a carriage and pair
followed this gentleman--carriage and horses which were beautiful even
in this land of horses.  For this was Cipriani de Lloseta de Mallorca,
a great man in Barcelona, if he wished it, a greater in his own little
island of Majorca, whether he wished it or not.

Leading out of this same fascinating Rambla, to the left, up towards
the impenetrable fortress of Juich--impenetrable excepting once, and
then it was the pestilent Englishman, as usual--leading then to the
left is the Calle de la Paz.  In the Street of the Peace there is a
house, on the left hand also, into the door of which one could not only
drive a coach and four, but eke a load of straw.  Moreover, the driver
could go to sleep and leave it to the horses, for there is plenty of
space.  This is the Casa Lloseta, the town residence since time
immemorial of the family of that name.  There are servants at the door,
there are servants on the broad marble staircase, there are servants
everywhere! for the Spaniard is unapproachable in the gentle art of
leaving things to others.  In the patio, or marble courtyard, there
plays a monotonous little fountain, peacefully plashing away the sunny
hours.

In England el Senor Conde de Lloseta de Mallorca would be looked upon
as a mystery, because he lived in a large house by himself; because it
was not known what his tastes might be; because the interviewer
interviewed him not, and because the Society rags had no opportunity of
describing his drawing-room.

In Spain things are different.  If the count chose to live in his own
cellar, his neighbours would shrug their shoulders and throw the end of
their capes well over to the back.  That was surely the business of the
count.

Moreover, Cipriani de Lloseta was not the sort of man of whom it is
easy to ask questions.  His was the pride of pride, which is a vice
unbreakable.  When the Moors went to Majorca in the eighth century they
found Llosetas there, and Llosetas were left behind eight hundred years
later, when the southern conqueror was driven back to his dark land.
Among his friends it is known that Cipriani de Lloseta lived alone
because he was faithful to the memory of one who, but for the hand of
God, would have lived with him until she was an old woman, filling,
perhaps, the great gloomy house in the Calle de la Paz with the prattle
of children's voices, with the clatter of childish feet in the marble
passages.

The younger women looked at him surreptitiously, and asked each other
what sort of wife this must have been; while their elders shrugged
their ample shoulders with a strange little Catalonian contraction of
the eyes, and said--

"It is not so much the woman herself as that which the man makes her."

For they are wise, these stout and elderly ladies.  They were once
young, and they learnt the lesson.

This man, Cipriani de Lloseta, leads a somewhat lonely life, inasmuch
as he associates but little with the men of his rank and station.  It
is, for instance, known that he walks on the Rambla, but no one of any
importance whatever, no one that is likely to recognise him, is aware
of the fact that another favourite promenade of his is the Muelle de
Ponente, that forsaken pier where the stone works are and where no one
ever promenades.  Here Cipriani de Lloseta walks gravely in the
evening--to be more precise, on Tuesday or Friday evening--about five
o'clock, when the boat sails for Majorca.

He stands, a lonely, cloaked figure, at the end of the long stone pier,
and his dark Spanish eyes rest on the steamer as it glides away into
the darkening east and south.

Often, often this man watches the boats depart, but he never goes
himself.  Often, often he gazes out in his chastened, impenetrable
silence over the horizon, as if seeking to pierce the distance and look
on the bare heights of the far-off island.

For there, over the glassy smoothness of the horizon, behind those
little grey clouds, is Majorca--and Lloseta.

Lloseta, a bare, brown village, standing on the hillside, as if it had
economically crept up there among the pines, so as to leave available
for cultivation every inch of the wonderful soil of the plain.  Below,
the vast fertile plateau, tilled like a garden, lies to the westward,
while to the east the rising undulations terminate in the bare uplands
of Inca.  Olive-trees cover the plain like an army, trees that were
planted by the Moors a thousand years ago.

Amid the rugged heights of the mountains, here at their highest, and in
the fastness of a gorge, lies Lloseta itself.

From the heights above a subtle invigorating odour of marjoram,
rosemary, lavender, growing wild like heather, comes down to mingle
with the more languid breath of tropic plant and flower.

Such is Lloseta--a home to live for, to die for, to dream of when away
from it.  As a man is dreaming of it now, just across that hundred
miles of smooth sea, on the end of the Muelle de Ponente at Barcelona.

He is always dreaming of it--in Spain, where he is a Spaniard--in
England, where he might be an Englishman.  It is not every one of us
who has a home from whence his name is derived, who signs his letters
with a word that is marked upon the map.

Such is Cipriani of that name, who has now left the Rambla and is
wandering along the deserted pier.

The steamer has loosed its moorings, is slowly picking its way out of
the crowded harbour, and it will pass the pier-head by the time that
Cipriani de Lloseta reaches that point.

The man walks slowly, cloaked to the mouth, for the evening breeze is
chilly.  He gravely descends the steps and begins to walk on the little
path around the circular tower at the end of the pier.  He usually
stands at the very end, so as to be as near to Majorca as possible, one
might almost think.

He gravely walks on, and quite suddenly he comes upon a youthful Briton
smoking a cigar and dangling a thick stick.

"Ah!" the two men exclaim.

"What are you doing in Barcelona?" asks the Spaniard.

"The devil only knows, my dear man.  I don't."

"I hope he had nothing to do with your coming here--idle hands, you
know."

The Englishman sat gravely down on a small granite column and reflected.

"No," he answered after a pause, "it was not that.  I left England
because I wanted to get away from--Well, from an old woman who wants me
to marry her daughter.  I went to Monte Carlo, and, if you don't mind
my saying so, I'm hanged if she didn't follow me, bringing the poor
girl with her."

The Spaniard smiled gravely.

"A willing victim!"

"No, Lloseta, you're wrong there.  That's the beastly part of it. That
girl, sir, was actually shivering with fright one night when the old
woman managed to leave us on the terrace together.  Some one else, you
know!"

The dark eyes looking across towards Majorca were not pleasant to
contemplate.

"However," pursued the ingenuous parti, "I spoke to her as one might
have done to another chap, you know.  I said, 'You're frightened of
something.'  She didn't answer.  'You're afraid that I'm going to ask
you to marry me.'  'Yes,' she answered.  'Well, I'm not.  I'm not such
a cad.'  And after that we got on all right.  She would have told who
it was if I had let her.  Two days later I sloped off here.  Spain
choked her off--the old lady, I mean."

Lloseta laughed, and the young man began to think that he had said
something rude.

"She did not know what a nice place it is," he added, with a
transparency which did no harm.  "Yes, you're right.  The devil had
something to do with my coming here.  Match-making old women are the
devil."

He paused and attended to his cigar.  The steamer passed within a
hundred yards of them.

The Englishman nodded towards it.

"Steamer's going to Majorca," he said.

Lloseta nodded his head.

"Yes," he answered gravely, "I know."

"I came down to see it off!"

The Spaniard looked at him sharply.

"Why?" he asked.

"I know an old chap on board--going across to fetch an English girl, a
Miss Challoner.  Her father's dead."

Lloseta said nothing.  Presently he turned to go, and as they walked
back together he arranged to send a carriage for the Englishman and his
luggage to bring him to the big house in the Street of the Peace, which
he explained with a shadowy smile was more comfortable than the hotel.

"So," he said to himself, as he walked towards his vast home alone, "so
the Caballero Challoner is dead.  They are passing off the stage one by
one."



CHAPTER V.  THE VALLEY OF REPOSE.

     A home where exiled angels might forbear
     Awhile to moan for paradise.

There is a valley far up in the mountains behind the ancient city of
Palma--the Val d'Erraha.  Some thousand years ago the Arabs found this
place.  After toils and labours, and many battles by sea and land, a
roaming sheikh settled here, calling it El Rahah--the Repose.

He dug a well--for where the Moor has been there is always sparkling
water--he planted olive trees, and he built a mill.  The well is there
to-day; the olive trees, old and huge and gnarled as are no other olive
trees on the earth, yield their yearly crop unceasingly; the mill
grinds the Spaniard's corn to-day.

In the Val d'Erraha there stands a house--a rambling, ungainly Farm, as
such are called in Majorca.  It runs off at strange angles, presenting
a broken face to all points of the compass.  From a distance it rather
resembles a village, for the belfry of the little chapel is visible and
the buildings seem to be broken up and divided.  On closer inspection
it is found to be self-contained, and a nearer approach discloses the
fact that it presents to the world four solid walls, and that it is
only to be entered by an arched gateway.

In the centre of the open patio stands the Moorish well, surrounded,
overhung by orange trees.  This house could resist a siege--indeed, it
was built for that purpose; for the Moorish pirates made raids on the
island almost within the memory of living persons.

Such is the Casa d'Erraha--the House of Repose.  It stands with its
back to the pine slopes, looking peacefully down the valley, over
terraces where grow the orange, the almond, the fig, the lemon, the
olive; and far below, where the water trickles, the feathery bamboo.

The city of Palma is but a few miles away, in its strong
thirteenth-century restriction within high ramparts.  It has its
cathedral, its court-house--all the orthodox requirements of a city,
and, moreover, it is the capital of the whilom kingdom of Majorca.
King Jaime is dead and gone.  Majorca, after many vicissitudes, has
settled down into an obscure possession of Spain; and to the old-world
ways of that country it has taken very kindly.

But with the unwritten history of Majorca we have little to do, and we
have much with the Casa d'Erraha and the owner thereof--a plain
Englishman of the name of Challoner--the last of his line, the third of
his race, to own the Casa d'Erraha.

Edward Challoner lay on his bed in the large room overlooking the
valley and the distant sea.  In the House of Repose he lay awaiting the
call to a longer rest than earthly weariness can secure.  The grave old
Padre of the neighbouring village of St. Pablo stood near the bed.  Eve
Challoner had sent for him, with the instinct that makes us wish to be
seen off on a long journey by a good man, of whatsoever creed or
calling.

At times the old priest gently patted the hand of Eve Challoner as she
stood by his side.

Climate and country and habit have a greater influence over the human
frame than we ever realise.  Eve Challoner had been subject to these
subtle influences to a rare extent.  Tall and upright, clad in black,
as all Spanish ladies are, she was English and yet Spanish. Of a clear
white, her skin was touched slightly by the sun and the warm air which
blows ever from the sea, blow which way it may across the little island.

Romance tells of Andalusian beauty, of Catalonian grace--and in sober
British earnest (a solid thing) there are few more beautiful women than
high-born Spanish ladies.  Eve Challoner had caught something--some
trick of the head--which belongs to Spain alone. Her eyes had a certain
northern vivacity of glance, a small something which is noticeable
enough in Southern Europe, though we should hardly observe it in
England, for it means education.  In the matter of learning, be it
noted in passing, the ladies of the Peninsula are not so very far above
their duskier sisters of the harem farther east.

The girl's eyes were dull now, with a sort of surprised anguish, for
sorrow had come to her before its time.  The man lying on the bed
before her had not reached the limit of his years.  Quite suddenly,
twelve hours before, he had complained of a numb feeling in his head,
and the voice he spoke in was thick and strange.  In a surprisingly
short time Edward Challoner was no longer himself--no longer the
cynical, polished gentleman of the world--but a hard-breathing, inert
deformity, hardly human.  From that time to this he had never spoken,
and Heaven knew there was enough for him to say. Death had caught him
unawares as, after all, he generally does catch us.  There were several
things to set in order as usual; for it is only in books and on the
stage that folks make a graceful exit, clearing up the little mystery,
forgiving the wrongs, boasting with feeble voice of the good they have
done--with lowering tone and soft music slowly working together to the
prompter's bell.  It is not in real life that dying men find much time
to prattle about their own souls.  They usually want all their breath
for those they leave behind.  And who knows!  Perhaps those waiting on
the other side think no worse of the man who dies fearing for others
and not for himself.

In Edward Challoner's paralysed brain there was a great wish to speak
to his daughter, but the words would not come.  He looked at those
around him with a dreary indistinctness as from a distance, almost as
if he had begun his long journey and was looking back from afar.

And so the afternoon wore on to the short southern twilight, and the
goat-bells came tinkling up from the valley--for nature must have her
way though men may die, and milking-time rules through all the changes.

While the light failed over the land two men were riding through it as
fast as horse could lay hoof to the ground.  They were on the small
road running from the Soller highway up to the Val d'Erraha, and he who
led the way seemed to know every inch of it.  This was Henry FitzHenry,
and his companion, ill at ease in a Spanish saddle, was the doctor of
Her Majesty's gunboat Kittiwake.

Four months earlier, by one of those chances which seem no chance when
we look back to them, the Kittiwake had broken down on leaving the
anchorage of Port Mahon.  Towed back by a consort, she had been there
ever since, awaiting some necessary pieces of machinery to be made in
England and sent out to her.  Hearing by chance that the navigating
lieutenant of the Kittiwake was Henry FitzHenry--usually known as
Fitz--Mr. Challoner had written to Minorca from the larger island,
introducing himself as the Honourable Mrs. Harrington's cousin, and
offering what poor hospitality the Val d'Erraha had to dispense.

In a little island there is not very much to talk about, and the
gossips of Majorca had soon laid hold of Fitz.  They said that the
English senorita up at the Casa d'Erraha had found a lover, and a fine,
handsome one at that; else, they opined, why should this English sailor
thrash his boat through any weather from Cuidadela in Minorca to Soller
in Majorca, riding subsequently from that small and lovely town over
the roughest country in the island to the Valley of Repose as if the
devil were at his heels.  That was only their way of saying it, for
they knew as well as any of us that love in front can make us move more
quickly than ever the devil from behind.

At Alcudia they watched his boat labour through the evil seas.  The
wind was never too boisterous for him, the waves never too high.

"It is," they said, "the English mariner from Mahon going to see the
Senorita Challoner.  Ah! but he has a firm hand."

And they smiled dreamily with their deep eyes, as knowing the malady
themselves.

This time there had been two figures clad in black oilskins in the
stern of the long white boat.  Two horses had been ordered by cable to
be ready at Soller instead of one.  For Eve Challoner had telegraphed
to her countrymen at Port Mahon when this strange and horrid numbness
seized her father.

The sun was setting behind the distant line of the sea when Fitz and
his companion urged their tired horses up the last slope to the Casa
d'Erraha.  Within the gateway Mrs. Baines, the only English servant in
this English house, was awaiting them.  She curtsied in an
old-fashioned way to the doctor, who had not seen an Englishwoman's
face for two years and more, and asked him to follow her.  Fitz did not
offer to accompany them--indeed, he made it quite obvious that he did
not want to do so.  Two of the vague attendants who are always to be
found in their numbers about the doorway and stableyard of a Spanish
country-house took the horses, and Fitz wandered round the patio to the
southern door which led to the terrace.

There was not very much change in Henry FitzHenry since we saw him in
Mrs. Harrington's drawing-room six years earlier.  The promise of the
boy had been fulfilled by the man, and here was a quiet Englishman,
chiefly remarkable for a certain directness of purpose which was his,
and seemed to pervade his being.  Here was one who had commanded
men--who had directed skilled labour for the six impressionable years
of his life.  And he who directs skilled labour is apt to differ in
manner, in thought and habit, from him whose commands are obeyed
mechanically.

The naval officer is a man of detail--he tells others to do that which
they know he can do better himself.

They said on board the Kittiwake, which was a small ship, that
Fitz,--"old" Fitz, they used to call him--was too big for a seafaring
life.  In height, he was nearly six feet--six feet of spare muscle and
bone--such a man as one sees on the north-east coast of England, the
east coast of Scotland, or the west coast of Norway--anywhere, in fact,
where the Vikings passed.

The deep blue eyes had acquired a certain quiet which had been absent
in the boyish face--the quiet that comes of a burden on the heart; of
the certain knowledge that the burden can never be removed.  Luke's
life was not the only one that had been spoiled by an examination
paper.  Examination papers have spoilt more lives than they have
benefited.  A twin brother is something more than a brother, and Fitz
went through life as if one side of him was suffering a dull, aching
pain.  The face of this man walking alone on the terrace of the House
of Repose was not happy.  Perhaps it was too strong for complete
happiness--some men are so, and others are too wise.  This was the
face, not of a very wise or a brilliant man, but of one who was strong
and simple--something in the nature of a granite rock.  Sandstone is
more easily shaped into a thing of beauty, but it is also the sandstone
that is worn by weather, while a deep mark cut on granite stays there
till the end.

Fitz had no intention of going upstairs.  He was not a man to take the
initiative in social matters.  His instinct told him that if Eve wanted
him she would send for him.  She had cabled to him to bring the doctor.
He had brought the doctor, and now he went out on the terrace to "stand
by," as he put it to himself, for further orders. If, as the gossips
averred, he was the Senorita's lover, he deemed it wiser to relinquish
that position just now.

As a matter of fact, however, no word of love had passed between them.

Fitz was standing by the low wall of the terrace looking down into the
hazy, dim depths of the valley, when the further orders which he
awaited came to him.

Hearing a light step on the pavement behind him, he turned, and faced
Eve, who was running towards him.

"Will you come upstairs?" she said.  "I think he wants to see you."

"Certainly," he answered.

She had hurried out, but they walked back rather slowly. Nevertheless,
they did not seem to have anything to say to each other.

When they entered the room upstairs together, a faint little smile full
of wisdom hovered for a second round the old priest's clean-shaven lips.

The dying man had evidently wanted something or some one.  The old
priest knew human nature, hence the little shadowy smile called up by
Eve's transparently partial interpretation of her father's desire.

Edward Challoner looked at him, but did not appear to recognise his
face.  It seemed that he had left the earth so far behind now that the
faces of those walking on it were no longer distinguishable.

He gave a little half-pettish groan, and a stillness came over the room.

The old padre and the doctor, who did not know a word of any common
language, exchanged a glance, and in a very business-like way, as of
one whose trade it was, the priest got down upon his knees.  Then the
doctor, half-shyly, approached Eve, and taking her by the arm, led her
gently out of the room.

Fitz stayed where he was, standing by the dead man, looking down at the
priest's bowed head, while the bell of the little chapel attached to
the Casa d'Erraha told the valley that a good man had gone to his rest.



CHAPTER VI.  AN ACTOR PASSES OFF THE STAGE.

     We pass; the path that each man trod
     Is dim, or will be dim, with weeds.

The priest was the first to speak.

"You are his friend, I also; but we are of different nations."

He paused, drawing the sheet up over the dead man's face.

"He was not of my Church.  You have your ways; will you make the
arrangements?"

"Yes," replied Fitz simply, "if you like."

"It is better so, my son"--the padre took a pinch of
snuff--"because--he was not of my Church.  You will stay here, you and
your friend.  She, the Senorita Eve, cannot be left alone, with her
grief."

He spoke Spanish, knowing that the Englishman understood it.

They drew down the blinds and passed out on to the terrace, where they
walked slowly backwards and forwards, talking over the future of Eve
and of the Casa d'Erraha.

In Spain, as in other southern lands, they speed the parting guest. Two
days later Edward Challoner was laid beside his father and grandfather
in the little churchyard in the valley below the Casa d'Erraha.  And
who are we that we should say that his chance of reaching heaven was
diminished by the fact that part of the Roman Catholic burial service
was read over him by a Spanish priest?

Fitz had telegraphed to Eve's only living relative, Captain Bontnor,
and Fitz it was who stayed on at the Casa d'Erraha until that mariner
should arrive; for the doctor was compelled to return to his ship at
Port Mahon, and the priest never slept in another but his own little
vicarage house.

And in the Casa d'Erraha was enacted at this time one of those strange
little comedies that will force themselves upon a tragic stage.  Fitz
deemed it correct that he should avoid Eve as much as possible, and
Eve, on the other hand, feeling lonely and miserable, wanted the
society of the simple-minded young sailor.

"Why do you always avoid me?" she asked suddenly on the evening after
the funeral.  He had gone out on to the terrace, and thither she
followed him in innocent anger, without afterthought.  She stood before
him with her slim white hands clasped together, resting against her
black dress, a sombre, slight young figure in the moonlight, looking at
him with reproachful eyes.

He hesitated a second before answering her.  She was only nineteen; she
had been born and brought up in the Valley of Repose amidst the simple
islanders.  She knew nothing of the world and its ways.  And Fitz, with
the burden of the unique situation suddenly thrust upon him, was, in
his chivalrous youthfulness, intensely anxious to avoid giving her
anything to look back to in after years when she should be a woman.  He
was tenderly solicitous for the feelings which would come later, though
they were absent now.

"Because," he answered, "I am not good at saying things.  I don't know
how to tell you how sorry I am for you."

She turned away and looked across to the hills at the other side of the
valley, a rugged outline against the sky.

"But I know all that," she said softly, "without being told."

A queer smile passed over his sunburnt face, as if she had
unintentionally and innocently made things more difficult for him.

"And," she continued, "it is--oh, so lonely."

She made an almost imperceptible little movement towards him.  Like the
child that she was, she was yearning for sympathy and comfort. "I
know--I know," he said.

Outward circumstance was rather against Fitz.  A clear, odorous Spanish
night, the young moon rising behind the pines, a thousand dreamy tropic
scents filling the air.  And Eve, half tearful, wholly lovable,
standing before him, innocently treading on dangerous ground,
guilelessly asking him to love her.

She, having grown almost to womanhood, pure as the flowers of the
field, ignorant, a child, knew nothing of what she was doing.  She
merely gave way to the instinct that was growing within her--the
instinct that made her turn to this man, claiming his strength, his
tenderness, his capability, as given to him for her use and for her
happiness.

"You must not avoid me," she said.  "Why do you do it?  Have I done
anything you dislike?  I have no one to speak to, no one who
understands, but you.  There is the padre, of course--and nurse; but
they do not understand.  They are--so OLD!  Let me stay here with you
until it is time to go to bed, will you?"

"Of course," he answered quietly.  "If you care to.  To-morrow I should
think we shall hear from your uncle.  He may come by the boat sailing
from Barcelona to-morrow night.  It will be a good thing if he does;
you see, I must get back to my ship."

"You said she would not be ready for sea till next month."

"No, but there is discipline to be thought of."

He looked past her, up to the stars, with a scrutinising maritime eye,
recognising them and naming them to himself.  He did not meet her
eyes--dangerous, tear-laden.

"There is something the matter with you," she said.  "You are
different.  Yes, you want my uncle to come the day after to-morrow--you
want to go away to Mahon as soon as you can.  I--  Oh, Fitz, I don't
want to be a coward!"

She stood in front of him, clenching her little fists, forcing back the
tears that gleamed in the moonlight.  He did not dare to cease his
astronomical observations.

"I WON'T be a coward--if you will only speak.  If you will tell me what
it is."

Then Fitz told his first deliberate lie.

"I have had bad news," he said, "about my brother Luke.  I am awfully
anxious about him."

He did it very well; for his motive was good.  And we may take it that
such a lie as this is not writ very large in the Book.

The girl paused for a little, and then deliberately wiped the tears
from her eyes.

"How horribly selfish I have been!" she said.  "Why did you not tell me
sooner?  I have only been thinking of my own troubles ever since--ever
since poor papa--  I am a selfish wretch!  I hate myself! Tell me about
your brother."

And so they walked slowly up and down the moss-grown terrace--alone in
this wonderful tropic night--while he told her the little tragedy of
his life.  He told the story simply, with characteristic gaps in the
sequence, which she was left to fill up from her imagination.

"I shall not like Mrs. Harrington," said Eve, when the story was told.
"I am glad that she cannot come much into my life.  My father wanted me
to go and stay with her last summer, but I would not leave him alone,
and for some reason he would not accept the invitation for himself.  Do
you know, Fitz, I sometimes think there is a past--some mysterious
past--which contained my father and Mrs. Harrington and a man--the
Count de Lloseta."

"I have seen him," put in Fitz, "at Mrs. Harrington's often."

The girl nodded her head with a quaint little assumption of shrewdness
and deep suspicion.

"My father admired him--I do not know why.  And pitied him intensely--I
do not know why."

"He was always very nice to me," answered Fitz, "but I never understood
him."

Talking thus they forgot the flight of time.  It sometimes happens thus
in youth.  And the huge clock in the stable yard striking ten aroused
Eve suddenly to the lateness of the hour.

"I must go," she said.  "I am glad you told me about--Luke.  I feel as
if I knew you better and understood--a little more.  Good-night."

She left him on the terrace, and walked sorrowfully away to the house
which could never be the same again.

Fitz watched her slight young form disappear through an open doorway,
and then he became lost in the contemplation of the distant sea, lying
still and glass-like in the moonlight.  He was looking to the north,
and it happened that from that same point of the compass there was
coming towards him the good steamer Bellver, on whose deck stood a
little shock-headed man--Captain Bontnor.

There is a regular service of steamers to and from the Island of
Majorca to the mainland, and, in addition, steamers make voyages when
pressure of traffic may demand.  The Bellver was making one of these
supplemental journeys, and her arrival was not looked for at Palma.

Eve and Fitz were having breakfast alone in the gloomy room
overshadowed by the trailing wings of the Angel of Death, when the
servant announced a gentleman to see the senorita.  The senorita
requested that the gentleman might approach, and presently there stood
in the doorway the quaintest little figure imaginable.

Captain Bontnor, with a certain sense of the fitness of things, had put
on his best clothes for this occasion, and it happened that the most
superior garment in his wardrobe was a thick pilot-jacket, which stood
out from his square person with solid angularity.  He had brushed his
hair very carefully, applying water to compass a smoothness which had
been his life-long and hitherto unattained aim. His shock hair--red
turning to grey--stood up four inches from his honest, wrinkled face.
It was unfortunate that his best garments should have been purchased
for the amenities of a northern climate. His trousers were as stiff as
his jacket, and he wore a decorous black silk tie as large as a
counterpane.

He stood quaintly bowing in the doorway, his bright blue eyes veiled
with shyness and a pathetic dumb self-consciousness.

"Please come in," said Eve in Spanish, quite at a loss as to who this
might be.

Then Fitz had an inspiration.  Something of the sea seemed to be wafted
from the older to the younger sailor.

"Are you Captain Bontnor?" he asked, rising from the table.

"Yes, sir, yes!  That's my name!"

He stood nervously in the doorway, mistrusting the parquet-floor,
mistrusting himself, mistrusting everything.

Fitz went towards him holding out his hand, which the captain took
after a manfully repressed desire to wipe his own broad palm on the
seam of his trousers.

"Then you are my uncle?" said Eve, coming forward.

"Yes, miss, I'm afraid--that is--yes, I'm your uncle.  You see--I'm
only a rough sort of fellow."

He came a little nearer and held his arms apart, looking down at his
own person in humble deprecation.

Eve was holding out her hand.  He took it with a vague, deep-rooted
chivalry, and she, stooping, very deliberately kissed him.

This seemed rather to bewilder the captain, for he shook hands again
with Fitz.

"I--" he began, nodding into Fitz's face.  "You are--eh?  I didn't
expect--to see--I didn't know--"

At that moment Eve saw.  It came to her in a flash, as most things do
come to women.  She even had time to doubt the story about Luke.

"This," she said, with crimson cheeks, "is Mr. FitzHenry of the
Kittiwake.  He kindly came to us in our trouble.  You will have to
thank him afterwards--uncle."

"And in the meantime I expect you want breakfast?" put in Fitz,
carefully avoiding Eve.

"Yes," added the girl, "of course.  Sit down.  No, here!"

"Thankye--thankye, miss--my dear, I mean.  Oh, anything'll do for me.
A bit of bread and a cup o' tea.  I had a bit and a sup on board before
she sheered alongside the quay."

He looked round rather helplessly, wondering where he should put his
hat--a solid, flat-crowned British affair.  Eve took it from him and
laid it aside.

Captain Bontnor sat very stiffly down.  His square form did not seem to
lose any of its height by the change of position, and with a stiff back
he looked admiringly round the room, waiting like a child at a school
treat.

As the meal progressed he grew more at ease, telling them of the little
difficulties of his journey, avoiding with a tact not always found
inside a better coat all mention of the sad event which had caused him
to take this long journey after his travelling days were done.

That which set him at ease more than all else was the fact, at length
fully grasped, that Fitz was, like himself, a sailor.  Here at least
was a topic upon which he could converse with any man. General subjects
only were discussed, as if by tacit consent.  No mention was made of
the future until this was somewhat rudely brought before their notice
by the announcement that a second visitor desired to see the senorita.

With a more assured manner than that of his predecessor, a small, dark
man came into the room, throwing off his cloak and handing it to the
servant.  He bowed ceremoniously and with true Spanish grace to Eve,
with less ceremony and more dignity to the two men.

"I beg that your excellency will accept the sympathy of my deepest
heart," he said.  "I regret to trouble you so soon after the great loss
sustained by your excellency, indeed, by the whole island of Majorca.
But it is a matter of business.  Such things cannot be delayed.  Have I
your excellency's permission to proceed?"

"Certainly, senor."

The man's clean-shaven face was like a mask.  The expressions seemed to
come and go as if worked by machinery.  Sympathy was turned off, and in
its place Polite-Attention-to-Business appeared.  From under his arm he
drew a leather portfolio, which he placed upon the table.

"The affairs of the late Cavalier Challoner were perhaps known to your
excellency?"

"No; I knew nothing of my father's affairs."

Sympathy seemed to be struggling behind "Polite-Attention-to-Business,"
while for a moment a real look of distress flitted over the parchment
face.  He paused for an instant, reflecting while he assorted his
papers.

"I am," he said, "the lawyer of his excellency the Count de Lloseta."

Eve and Fitz exchanged a glance, and as silence was kept the lawyer
went on.

"Three generations ago," he said, "a Count de Lloseta, the grandfather
of this present excellency, made over on 'rotas' the estate and house
known as the Val d'Erraha to the grandfather of the late Cavalier
Challoner--a Captain Challoner, one of Admiral Byng's men."

Again he paused, arranging his papers.

"The Majorcan system 'rotas' is known to your excellency?"

"No, senor."

"On this system an estate is made over for one or two or three
generations by the proprietor to the lessee who farms or sublets the
land, and in lieu of rent hands over to the proprietor a certain
proportion of the crops.  Does your excellency follow me?"

Eve did not answer at once.  Then the lawyer's meaning seemed to dawn
upon her.

"Then," she said, "the Casa d'Erraha never belonged to my father?"

"Never"--with a grave bow.

"And I have nothing--nothing at all!  I am penniless?"

The lawyer looked from her to Fitz, who was standing beside her
listening to the conversation, but not offering to take part in it.

"Unless your excellency has private means--in England, perhaps."

"I do not know--I know nothing.  And we must leave the Casa d'Erraha.
When, senor?  Tell me when."

The lawyer avoided her distressed eyes.

"Well," he said slowly, "the law is rather summary.  I--your excellency
understands I only do my duty.  I am not the principal. I have no
authority whatever--except the law."

"You mean that I must go at once?"

The lawyer's parchment face was generously expressive of grief now.

"Excellency, the lease terminated at the death of the late Caballero
Challoner."

Eve stood for a moment, breathing hard.  Fate seemed suddenly to have
turned against her at every point.  At this moment Captain Bontnor made
bold--one could see him doing it--to take her hand.

"My dear," he said, "I don't quite understand what this foreign
gentleman and you are talkin' about.  But if it's trouble, dear, if
it's trouble--just let me try."



CHAPTER VII.  IN THE STREET OF THE PEACE.

     Measure thy life by loss instead of gain,
     Not by the wine drunk, but the wine poured forth.

"MY DEAR MISS CHALLONER,--I learn that you are in Barcelona, and at the
same time I find with some indignation that my lawyer in Mallorca, with
a deplorable excess of zeal, has been acting without my orders in
respect to the property of the Val d'Erraha.  I hasten to place myself
and possessions at your disposition, and take the liberty of writing to
request an interview, instead of calling on you at your hotel, for
reasons which you will readily understand, knowing as you do the
gossiping ways of hotels.  As an old friend of your father's, and one
who moved and lived in neighbourly intercourse with him before your
birth, and before the deplorable death of your mother, I now waive
ceremony, and beg that you and your uncle will come and take tea with
me this afternoon at my humble abode in the 'Calle de la Paz.'--Believe
me, dear Miss Challoner, yours very sincerely,
          "CIPRIANI DE LLOSETA DE MALLORCA."

Eve read this letter in her room in the Hotel of the Four Nations at
Barcelona.  She had only been on the mainland twenty-four hours when it
was delivered to her by a servant of the Count's, who came to her
apartment and delivered it into her own hands, as is the custom of
Spanish servants.

Eve Challoner had grown older during the last few days.  She had been
brought face to face with life as it really is, and not as we dream it
in the dreams of youth.  She was not surprised to receive this letter,
although she had no idea that the Count de Lloseta was in Spain.  But
the varying emotions of the last week had, as it were, undermined the
confident hopefulness with which we look forward when we are young, and
sometimes when we are old, to the management of our own lives here
below.  She was beginning to understand certain terms which she had
heard applied to human existence, and to which she had hitherto
attached no special meaning as relating to herself.  More especially
did she understand at this time that life may be compared to a stream,
for she was vaguely conscious of drifting she knew not whither.

Fitz had come suddenly into her life; Captain Bontnor had come into it;
and now this man, Cipriani de Lloseta, seemed to be asserting his right
to come into it too.  And she did not know quite what to do with them
all.  She had never, in the quiet, dreamy days of her youth, pictured a
life with any of these men in it, and the future was suddenly
tremendous, unfathomable.  There were vast possibilities in it of
misery, of danger, of difficulty; and behind these a vague, new feeling
of a possible happiness far exceeding the happiness of her peaceful
childhood.

Without consulting her uncle, who had gone out into the street to walk
backwards and forwards before the door, as he had walked backwards and
forwards on his deck for forty years, she sat down and accepted the
Count's informal invitation.  She seemed to do it without reflection,
as if impelled thereto by something stronger than pro or con, as if
acknowledging the Spaniard's right to come into her life, bringing to
bear upon it an influence which she never attempted to fathom.

Thus it came about that Eve and Captain Bontnor found themselves
awaiting their host in the massive, gloomy drawing-room of the Palace
in the Calle de la Paz at five o'clock that afternoon.

Captain Bontnor had learnt a great deal during the last few days; among
other things he had learnt to love his niece with a simple, dog-like
devotion, which had a vein of pathos in it for those who see such
things.  He placed himself well behind Eve, and looked around him with
a wondering awe.

"I think, my dear," he said, "that it would have been better if you had
come alone.  I--you know I am getting too old to learn manners
now--eh--he! he!  Yes.  Having been so long at sea, you know."

"I think the sea teaches men manners, uncle," said Eve, with a little
smile which he did not understand.  "At any rate," she went on,
touching his rough sleeve affectionately, "it teaches them something
that I like."

"Does it, now?  What, now?  Tell me."

"I do not know," answered the girl, as if speaking to herself, and at
this moment the door was opened.  The man who came in was of medium
height, with a long, narrow face, and singularly patient eyes.

"I should have known you," he said, approaching Eve, and holding out
his hand.  "You do not remember your mother?  I do, however.  You are
like her--and she was a good woman.  And this is Captain Bontnor--your
uncle."

He shook hands with the old sailor without the faintest flicker of
surprise at his somewhat incongruous appearance.

"I am glad," he said suavely, "to make Captain Bontnor's acquaintance."

He turned to draw forward a chair, and the light from the high, barred
window falling full on his head, betrayed the fact that his hair, close
cut as an English soldier's, was touched and flecked with grey.  His
lithe youthfulness of frame rather surprised Eve, who knew him to be a
contemporary of her father's.

"It is very good of you to come," he went on in a low voice.  "I took
the privilege of the elder generation, you see!  Captain, pray take
that chair."

He did the honours with a British ease of manner, strangely touched by
a Spanish dignity.

"When I heard of your great bereavement," he said, turning to Eve with
a grave bow, "I ought perhaps to have gone to Mallorca at once to offer
you what poor assistance was in my power.  But circumstances, over
which I had no control, prevented my doing so. My offer of help is
tardy, I know, but it is none the less sincere."

"Thank you," replied Eve, conscious of a feeling of pleasant reliance
in this new-found ally.  "But I have good friends--the Padre Fortis, my
uncle, and--a friend of ours, Mr. FitzHenry."

"Of the Kittiwake--at Mahon?"

"Yes."

"I have the pleasure of knowing Mr. FitzHenry," murmured the Count.
"Now," he said, with a sudden smile which took her by surprise by
reason of the alteration it made in the whole man, "will you do me a
great favour?"

"I should like to," answered Eve, with some hesitation.

"And you?" said the Count, turning to Captain Bontnor.

"Oh yes," replied that sailor bluntly, "if it's possible."

"I want you," continued the Count de Lloseta, "to forget that this is
the first time we meet, and to look upon me as a friend--one of the
most intimate--of your father."

"My father," said the girl, "always spoke of you as such."

"Indeed, I am glad of that.  Now, tell me, who have you in the world
besides Captain Bontnor?"

"I have no one.  But--"

"We was thinking," put in the Captain, in ungrammatical haste, "that
Eve would come and live with me.  It isn't a grand house--just a little
cottage.  But such as it is, she'll have a kindly welcome."

"And, I have no doubt, a happy home", added the Count, with one of his
dark smiles.  "I was merely wondering whether Miss Challoner intended
to live in the Casa d'Erraha or to let it?"'

Eve looked up in surprise, and Captain Bontnor's blue eyes wandered
from her face to the dark and courteous countenance of Cipriani de
Lloseta.

"Perhaps," continued the Spaniard imperturbably, "you have not yet made
up your mind on the subject."

"But the Casa d'Erraha does not belong to me," said Eve, and Captain
Bontnor wagged his head in confirmation.  "Your own lawyer explained to
me that my father only held it on 'rotas.'"

"My own lawyer, my dear young lady, thereby proved himself an ass."

"But," said Eve, somewhat mystified, "the Val d'Erraha belongs to you,
and you must know it.  I have no title-deeds--I have nothing."

"Except possession, which is nine points of the law.  Will you take
tea, and cream?  I do not know how many points the law has, but one
would naturally conclude that nine is a large proportion of the whole."

While he spoke he was pouring out the tea.  He handed a cup to her with
a grave smile, as if the matter under discussion were one of a small
and passing importance.

"I suppose," he added, "you have learnt to love the Casa d'Erraha. It
is a place--a place one might easily become attached to.  Do you
know"--he turned his back to her, busying himself with the silver
teapot--"Lloseta?" he added jerkily.

"Yes.  My father and I used to go there very often."

"Ah--" He waited--handing Captain Bontnor a cup of tea in silence. But
Eve was not thinking of Lloseta; she was thinking of the Casa d'Erraha.

"My father did not speak to me of his affairs," she said.  "He was
naturally rather reserved, and--and it was very sudden."

"Yes.  So I learnt.  That indeed is my excuse for intruding myself upon
your notice at this time.  I surmised that my poor friend's affairs had
been left in some confusion.  He was too thorough a gentleman to be
competent in affairs.  I thought that perhaps my small influence and my
diminutive knowledge of Majorcan law--the Roman law, in point of
fact--might be of some use to you."

"Thank you," she answered; "I think we settled everything before we
left the island, although we did not see Senor Pena, your lawyer.
I--the Casa d'Erraha belongs to you!" she added, suddenly descending to
feminine reiteration.

"Prove it," said the Count quietly.

"I cannot do that."

He shrugged his shoulders with a smile.

"Then," he said, "I am afraid you cannot shift your responsibility to
my shoulders."

The girl looked at him with puzzled young eyes.  He stood before her,
dignified, eminently worthy of the great name he bore--a solitary,
dark-eyed, inscrutable man, whose whole being subtly suggested
hopelessness and an empty life.  She shook her head.

"But I cannot accept the Casa d'Erraha on those terms."

The Count drew forward a chair and sat down.

"Listen," he said, with an explanatory forefinger upheld.  "Three
generations ago two men made a verbal agreement in respect to the
estate of the Val d'Erraha.  To-day no one knows what that agreement
was.  It may have been the ordinary 'rotas' of Minorca.  It may not. In
those days the English held Minorca; my ancestor may therefore have
been indebted to your great-grandfather, for we have some small estates
in Minorca.  You know what the islands are to-day.  They are two
hundred years behind Northern Europe.  What must they have been a
hundred and twenty years ago?  We have no means of finding out what
passed between your great-grandfather and my grandfather.  We only know
that three generations of Challoners have lived in the Casa d'Erraha,
paying to the Counts of Lloseta a certain proportion of the product of
the estate.  I do not mind telling you that the smallness of that
proportion does away with the argument that the agreement was the
ordinary 'rotas' of the Baleares.  We know nothing--we can prove
nothing.  If you claimed the estate I might possibly wrest it from
you--not by proof, but merely because the insular prejudice against a
foreigner would militate against you in a Majorcan court of law.  I
cannot legally force you to hold the estate of the Val d'Erraha.  I can
only ask you as the daughter of one of my best friends to accept the
benefit of a very small doubt."

Eve hesitated.  What woman would not?

Captain Bontnor set down his cup very gravely on the table.

"I don't rightly understand," he said sturdily, "this 'rotas' business.
But it seems to me pretty plain that the estate never belonged to my
late brother-in-law.  Now what I say is, if the place belongs by right
to Miss Challoner she'll take it.  If it don't; well, then it don't,
and she can't accept it as a present from anybody.  Much obliged to you
all the same."

The Count laughed pleasantly.

"My dear sir, it is not a present."

The Captain stuffed his hands very deeply into his pockets.

"Then it's worse--it's charity.  And she has no need of that.  Thank ye
all the same," he replied.

He stared straight in front of him with a vague and rather painful
suggestion of incapability that sometimes came over him.  He was
wondering whether he was doing right in this matter.

"If," he added, half to himself, as a sort of afterthought on the
crying question of ways and means--"if it comes to that, I can go to
sea again.  There's plenty would be ready to give me a ship."

The Count was still smiling.

"There is no question," he said, "of charity.  What has Miss Challoner
done that I should offer her that?  I am in ignorance as to her
affairs.  I do not know the extent of her income."

"As far as we can make out," said Eve gently, "there is nothing. But I
can work.  I thought that my knowledge of Spanish might enable me to
make a living."

"No," said Captain Bontnor, "I'm d---  I mean I should not like you to
go governessing, my dear."

The Count was apparently reflecting.

"I have a compromise to propose," he said, addressing himself to Eve.
"If we place the property in the hands of a third person--you know the
value of land in Majorca--to farm and tend; if at the end of each year
the profits be divided between us?"

But Eve's suspicions were aroused, and her woman's instinct took her
further than did Captain Bontnor's sturdy sense of right and wrong.

"I am afraid," she said, rising from her chair, "that I must refuse.
I--I think I understand why papa always spoke of you as he did.  I am
very grateful to you.  I know now that you have been trying to give me
D'Erraha.  It was a generous thing to do--a most generous thing.  I
think people would hardly believe me if I told them.  I can only thank
you; for I have no possible means of proving to you how deeply I feel
it.  Somehow"--she paused, with tears and a sad little smile in her
eyes--"somehow it is not the gift that I appreciate so much as--as your
way of trying to give it."

The Spaniard spread out his two hands in deprecation.

"My child," he murmured gently, "I have not another word to say."



CHAPTER VIII.  THE DEAL.

     Oh, the little more, and how much it is!
     And the little less, and what worlds away!

A howling gale of wind from the south-east, and driving snow and
darkness.  The light of Cap Grisnez struggling out over the blackness
of the Channel, and the two Foreland lights twinkling feebly from their
snow-clad heights.  A night to turn in one's bed with a sleepy word of
thanksgiving that one has a bed to turn in, and no pressing need to
turn out of it.

The smaller fry of Channel shipping have crept into Dungeness or the
Downs.  Some of them have gone to the bottom.  Two of them are breaking
up on the Goodwins.

The Croonah Indian liner is pounding into it all, with white decks and
whistling shrouds.  The passengers are below in their berths. Some of
them--and not only the ladies--are sending up little shamefaced
supplications to One who watches over the traveller in all places and
at all times.

And on the bridge of the Croonah a man all eyes and stern resolve and
maritime instinct.  A man clad in his thickest clothes, and over all of
them his black oilskins.  A man with three hundred lives depending upon
his keen eyes, his knowledge, and his judgment.  A man whose name is
Luke FitzHenry.

The captain has gone below for a few minutes to thaw, leaving the ship
to FitzHenry.  He does it with an easy conscience--as easy, that is, as
the maritime conscience can well be in a gale of wind, with the
Foreland lights ahead and infinite possibilities all around.  The
captain drinks his whisky and hot water with a certain slow
appreciation of the merits of that reprehensible solution, and glances
at the aneroid barometer on the bulkhead of his cabin.

Overhead, on the spidery bridge, far up in the howling night, Luke
FitzHenry, returning from the enervating tropics, stares sternly into
the night, heedless of the elemental warfare.  For Luke FitzHenry has a
grudge against the world, and people who have that take a certain
pleasure in evil weather.

"The finest sailor that ever stepped," reflects the captain of his
second officer--and he no mean mariner himself.

The Croonah had groped her way up Channel through a snowstorm of three
days' duration, and the brunt of it had fallen by right of seniority on
the captain and his second officer.  Luke FitzHenry was indefatigable,
and, better still, he was without enthusiasm.  Here was the steady,
unflinching combativeness which alone can master the elements.  Here
was the true genius of the sea.

With his craft at his fingers' ends, Luke had that instinct of
navigation by which some men seem to find their way upon the trackless
waters.  There are sailors who are no navigators just as there are
hunting men who cannot ride.  There are navigators who will steer you
from London to Petersburg without taking a sight, from the Thames to
the Suez Canal without looking at their sextant. Such a sailor as this
was Luke FitzHenry.  Perfectly trained, he assimilated each item of
experience with an insatiable greed for knowledge--and it was all
maritime knowledge.  He was a sailor and nothing else.  But it is
already something--as they say in France--to be a good sailor.

Luke FitzHenry was a man of middle height, sturdy, with broad shoulders
and a slow step.  His clean-shaven face was a long oval, with
pessimistic, brooding eyes--eyes that saw everything except the small
modicum of good which is in all human things, and to this they were
persistently blind.  Taking into consideration the small, set mouth, it
was eminently a pugnacious face--a face that might easily degenerate to
the coarseness of passion in the trough of a losing fight.  But,
fortunately, Luke's lines were cast upon the great waters, and he who
fights the sea must learn to conquer, not by passionate effort, but by
consistent, cool resolve.  Those who worked with him feared him, and in
so doing learnt the habit of his ways.  The steersman, with one eye on
the binnacle, knew always where to find him with the other; for Luke
hardly moved during his entire watch on deck.  He took his station at
the starboard end of the narrow bridge when he came on duty, and from
that spot he rarely moved.  These little things betray a man, if one
only has the patience to piece them together.

Those who go down to the sea in ships, and even those who take their
pleasure on the great water, know the relative merits of the man who
goes to his post and stays there, and of him who is all over the ship
and restless.

Luke was standing now like a statue--black and gleaming amid the
universal grey of the winter night, and his deep eyes, cat-like,
pierced the surrounding gloom.

Here was a man militant.  A man who must needs be fighting something,
and Fate, with unusual foresight, had placed him in a position to fight
Nature.  Luke FitzHenry rather revelled in a night such as this--the
gloom, the horror, and the patent danger of it suited his morose,
combative nature.  He loved danger and difficulty with the subtle form
of love which a fighting man experiences for a relentless foe.

From light to light he pushed his intrepid way through the darkness and
the bewildering intricacies of the Downs, and in due time, in the full
sunlight of the next day, the Croonah sidled alongside the quay in the
Tilbury Dock.  The passengers, with their new lives before them,
stumbled ashore, already forgetting the men who, smoke-begrimed and
weary, had carried these lives within their hands during the last month
or more.  They crowded down the gangway and left Luke to go to his
cabin.

There were two letters lying on the little table.  One from Fitz at
Mahon, the other in a handwriting which Luke had almost forgotten. He
turned it over with the subtle smile of a man who has a grudge against
women.  But he opened it before the other.

"DEAR LUKE,--I am glad to hear from Fitz that you are making your way
in the Merchant Service.  He tells me that your steamer, the Croonah,
has quite a reputation on the Indian route, and your fellow-officers
are all gentlemen.  I shall be pleased to see you to dinner the first
evening you have at your disposal.  I dine at seven-thirty.--Believe
me, yours very truly, MARIAN HARRINGTON.

"P.S.--I shall deem it a favour if you will come in dress clothes, as I
have visitors."

And, strange to say, it was the feminine stab in the postscript that
settled the matter.  Luke sat down and wrote out a telegram at once,
accepting Mrs. Harrington's invitation for the same evening.

When he rang the bell of the great house in Grosvenor Gardens at
precisely half-past seven that evening, he was conscious of a certain
sense of elation.  He was quite sure of himself.

He thought that the large drawing-room was empty when the butler
ushered him into it, and some seconds elapsed before he discerned the
form of a young lady in a deep chair near the fire.

The girl turned her head and rose from the chair with a smile and a
certain grace of manner which seemed in some indefinite way to have
been put on with her evening dress.  For a moment Luke gazed at her,
taken aback.  Then he bowed gravely, and she burst into a merry laugh.

"How funny!" she cried.  "You do not know me?"

"No-o-o," he answered, searching his mind.  For he was a passenger
sailor, and many men and women crossed his path during the year.

She came forward with a coquettish little laugh and placed herself
beneath the gas, inviting his inspection, sure of herself, confident in
her dressmaker.

She was small and very upright, with a peculiarly confident carriage of
the head, which might indicate determination or, possibly, a mere
resolution to get her money's worth.  Her hair, perfectly dressed, was
of the colour of a slow-worm.  She called it fair.  Her enemies said it
reminded them of snakes.  Her eyes were of a darker shade of ashen
grey, verging on hazel.  Her mouth was mobile, with thin lips and an
expressive corner--the left-hand corner--and at this moment it
suggested pert inquiry.  Some people thought she had an expressive
face, but then some people are singularly superficial in their mode of
observation.  There was really no power of expressing any feeling in
the small, delicately cut face.  It all lay in the mouth, in the
left-hand corner thereof.

"Well?" she said, and Luke's wonder gradually faded into admiration.

"I give it up," he answered.

She shrugged her shoulders in pretended disgust.

"You are not polite," she said, with a glance at his stalwart person
which might have indicated that there were atoning merits.  "I must say
you are not polite, Luke.  I do not think I will tell you.  It would be
still more humiliating to learn that you have forgotten my existence."

"You cannot be Agatha!" he exclaimed.

"Can I not?  It happens that I AM Agatha Ingham-Baker--at your service!"

She swept him a low curtsey and sailed away to the mantelpiece, thereby
giving him the benefit of the exquisite fit of her dress. She stood
with one arm on the mantel-shelf, looking back at him over her
shoulder, summing him up with a little introspective nod.

"I should like to know why I cannot be Agatha," she asked, with that
keen feminine scent for a personality which leads to the uttering of so
much nonsense, and the brewing of so much mischief.

"I never thought--" he began.

"Yes?"

He laughed and refused to go any farther, although she certainly made
the way easy for him.

"In fact," she said mockingly, "you are disappointed.  You never
expected me to turn out such a horrid--"

"You know it isn't that," he interrupted, with a flash of his gloomy
eyes.

"Not now," she said quietly, glancing towards the door.  "I hear Mrs.
Harrington coming downstairs.  You can tell me afterwards."

Luke turned on his heel and greeted Mrs. Harrington with quite a
pleasant smile, which did not belong to her by rights, but to the girl
behind him.

Fitz had been away for two years.  Mrs. Harrington in making overtures
of peace to Luke had been prompted by the one consistent motive of her
life, self-gratification.  She was tired of the obsequious society of
persons like the Ingham-Bakers, whom she mentally set down as
parasites.  There is a weariness of the flesh that comes to rich women
uncontrolled.  They weary of their own power.  Tyranny palls.  Mrs.
Harrington was longing to be thwarted by some one stronger than
herself.  The FitzHenrys even in their boyhood had, by their sturdy
independence, their simple, seamanlike self-assertion, touched some
chord in this lone woman's heart which would not vibrate to cringing
fingers.

She had sent for Luke because Fitz was away.  She wanted to be
thwarted.  She would have liked to be bullied.  And also there was that
subtle longing for the voice, the free gesture, the hearty manliness of
one whose home is on the sea.

As Luke turned to greet her with the rare smile on his face he was
marvellously like Fitz.  He was well dressed.  There was not the
slightest doubt that this was a gentleman.  Nay, more, he looked
distinguished.  And above all, he carried himself like a sailor.  So
the reconciliation was sudden and therefore complete.  A reconciliation
to be complete must be sudden.  It is too delicate a thing to bear
handling.

Luke had come intending to curse.  He began to feel like staying to
bless.  He was quite genial and pleasant, greeting Mrs. Ingham-Baker as
an old friend, and thereby distinctly upsetting that lady's mental
equilibrium.  She had endeavoured to prevent this meeting, because she
thought it was not fair to Fitz.  She noted the approval with which
Mrs. Harrington's keen eyes rested on the young sailor, and endeavoured
somewhat obviously to draw Agatha's attention to it by frowns and
heavily significant nods, which her dutiful daughter ignored.

Mrs. Harrington glanced impatiently at the clock.

"That stupid Count is late," she said.

"Is the Count de Lloseta coming?" asked Mrs. Ingham-Baker eagerly.

From the strictly impartial standpoint of a mother she felt sure that
the Count admired Agatha.

"Yes," answered Mrs. Harrington, with a cynical smile.

And Mrs. Ingham-Baker, heedless of the sarcasm, was already engaged in
an exhaustive examination of Agatha's dress.  She crossed the room and
delicately rectified some microscopic disorder of the snake-like hair.
With a final glance up and down, she crossed her arms at her waist and
looked complacently towards the door.

The Count came in, and failed to realise the hope that apparently
buoyed Mrs. Ingham-Baker's maternal heart.  He did not strike an
attitude or cover his dazzled eyes when they rested on Agatha.  He
merely came forward with his gravest smile and uttered the pleasant
fictions appropriate to the occasion.  Mrs. Ingham-Baker was marked in
her gracious reception of the Spaniard, and the hostess watched her
effusions with a queer little smile.

At dinner Mrs. Ingham-Baker was opposite to the Count, who seemed
preoccupied and somewhat absent-minded.  Her attention was divided
between an anticipatory appreciation of Mrs. Harrington's cook and an
evident admiration for her own daughter.

"Agatha was just saying," observed the stout lady between the candle
shades, "that we had not seen the Count de Lloseta for quite a long
time.  Only yesterday, was it not, dear?"

Agatha acquiesced.

"The loss," answered the Count, "is mine.  But it is more than made
good by the news that my small absence was noted.  I have been abroad."

Mrs. Harrington at the end of the table looked up sharply, and a few
drops of soup fell from her upraised spoon with a splash.

"In Spain?" she asked.

"In Spain."



CHAPTER IX.  CUT FOR PARTNERS.

     Beware equally of a sudden friend and a slow enemy.

A wise man had said of Cipriani de Lloseta that had he not been a Count
he would have been a great musician.  He had that singular facility
with any instrument which is sometimes given to musical persons in
recompense for voicelessness.  The Count spoke like one who could sing,
but his throat was delicate, and so the world lost a great singer.  Of
most instruments he spoke with a half-concealed contempt.  But of the
violin he said nothing.  He was not a man to turn the conversational
overflow upon self-evident facts.

He invariably brought his violin to Grosvenor Gardens when Mrs.
Harrington invited him, in her commanding way, to dine.  It amused Mrs.
Harrington to accompany his instrument on the piano.  Her music was of
the accompanying order.  It was heartless and correct.  Some of us, by
the way, have friends of this same order, and, like Mrs. Harrington's
music, they are not in themselves either interesting or pleasant.

The piano stood in the inner drawing-room, and thither the Count and
Mrs. Harrington repaired when the gentlemen had joined the ladies. In
the larger drawing-room Luke was fortunate enough to secure a seat near
to Agatha--quite near, and a long way from Mrs. Ingham-Baker,
digestively asleep in an armchair.

He did not exactly know how this arrangement was accomplished--it
seemed to come.  Possibly Agatha knew.

Mrs. Harrington struck a keynote and began playing the prelude of a
piece well known to them both.

"Why did you not tell me that you were going to Spain?" she asked
somewhat tersely, under cover of her own chords.

"Had I known that it would interest you--" murmured De Lloseta,
tightening his bow.  There was a singular gleam in his eye.  The gleam
that one sees in the eye of a dog which has been thrashed, telling the
wise that one day the dog will turn.

"I am always interested," said the grey lady slowly, "in Spain--and
even in Mallorca."

She used the Spanish name of the island with the soft roll in the
throat that English people rarely acquire.  He was prepared for it,
standing with raised bow, looking past her iron-grey head to the music.
She glanced back over her shoulder into his face with the cruel
cat-like love of torture that some people possess.  Far away in the
distant wisdom of Providence it had been decreed that this woman should
have no child less clever than herself to tease into hopelessness.

The Spaniard laid his magic bow to the strings, leaving her to follow.
He tucked the violin against his collar with a little caressing motion
of his chin, and in a few moments he seemed to forget all else than the
voice of the instrument.  There are a few musicians who can give to a
violin the power of speech.  They can make the instrument tell some
story--not a cheery tale, but rather like the story that dogs tell us
sometimes--a story which seems to have a sequence of its own, and to be
quite intelligible to its teller; but to us it is only comprehensible
in part, like a tale that is told dramatically in a tongue unknown.

The Count stood up and played with no fine frenzy, no rolling eyes, no
swaying form; for such are the signs of a hopeless effort, hung out by
the man who has heard the story and tries in vain to tell it himself.

Even Agatha was outdone, for Luke drifted off into absent-mindedness,
and after a little effort she left him to return at his own time.  She
listened to the music herself, but it did not seem to touch her.  For
sound ascends, and this was already above Agatha Ingham-Baker's head.
The piece over, Mrs. Harrington selected another.

"You did not go across to Mallorca?" she inquired, in a voice that did
not reach the other room.  "No," he answered, "I did not go across to
Mallorca."

He stepped back a pace to move a chair which was too near to him, and
the movement made it impossible for her to continue the conversation
without raising her voice.  She countered at once by rising and laying
the music aside.

"I am too tired for more," she said.  "You must ask Agatha to accompany
you.  She plays beautifully.  I have it from her mother!"

Mrs. Harrington stood for a moment looking into the other room. Luke
and Agatha were talking together with some animation.

"I have been very busy lately," she said conversationally.  "Perhaps
you have failed to notice that I have had this room redecorated?"

He looked round the apartments with a smile, which somehow conveyed a
colossal contempt.  "Very charming," he said.

"It was done by a good man and cost a round sum."  She paused, looking
at him with a mocking glance.  "In fact, I am rather in need of money.
My balance at the bank is not so large as I could wish."

The Count's dark eyes rested on her face with the small gleam in their
depths which has already been noted.

"I am not good at money matters," he said.  "But, so far as I
recollect, you have already exceeded our--"

"Possibly."

"And, unless my memory plays me false, there was a distinct promise
that this should not occur again.  Perhaps a lady's promise--"

"Possibly."

The Count contented himself with a derisive laugh beneath his breath,
and waited for her to speak again.  This she did as she moved towards
the other room.

"I think five hundred pounds would suffice--at present.  Agatha," she
continued, raising her voice, "come and play the Count's accompaniment.
He finds fault with me to-night."

"No.  I only suggested a little piu lento!  You take it too fast."

"Ah!  Well, I want to talk to Luke.  Come, Agatha."

"I tremble at the thought of my own temerity," said Miss Ingham-Baker,
as she seated herself on a music-stool with a great rustle of silks and
considerable play of her white arms.

"Are you bold?" inquired the Count, with impenetrable suavity.

"I am--to attempt your accompaniments.  I expect to be found fault
with."

"It will at all events be a novelty," he answered, setting the music in
order.

The Spaniard opened the music-book and indicated the page.  Agatha
dashed at it with characteristic confidence, and the voice of the
violin came singing softly into the melody.  It was a better
performance than the last.  Agatha's playing was much less correct, but
as she went on she forgot herself, and she put something into the
accompaniment which Mrs. Harrington had left out.  It was not time,
neither was it a stricter attention to the composer's instructions.  It
was only a possibility, after all.

In the other room Mrs. Ingham-Baker slumbered still.  Mrs. Harrington,
unmoved in her grey silk dress, was talking with her usual
incisiveness, and Luke was listening gravely.  When the piece was done,
Mrs. Harrington said over her shoulder-- "Go on.  You get on splendidly
together."

And she returned to her conversation with Luke.

The Count looked through his music.

"How devoted she is to her nephews!" said Agatha, tapping the ivory
keyboard with a dainty finger.

"Yes."

"And apparently to both alike."

There was a little flicker beneath the Count's lowered eyelids.

"Apparently so," he answered, with assumed hesitation.

Agatha continued playfully, tapping the ivory notes with her middle
finger--the others being gracefully curled.

"You speak as if you doubted the impartiality."

"I am happy to say I always doubt a woman's impartiality."

She laughed and drew the stool nearer to the piano.  It would have been
easier to drift away into the conversational channel of vague
generality which he opened up.  He waited with some curiosity.

"Do you think there is a preference?" she said, falling into his small
trap.

"Ah!  There you ask me something that is beyond my poor powers of
discrimination.  Mrs. Harrington does not wear her feelings on her
sleeve.  She is difficult."

"Very," admitted Agatha, with a little sigh.

"I am naturally interested in the FitzHenrys," she went on after a
little pause, with baffling frankness.  "You see, we were children
together."

"So I understand.  I too am interested in them--merely because I like
them."

"I am afraid," continued Agatha, tentatively turning the pages of the
music which he had set before her, speaking as if she was only half
thinking of what she was saying--"I am afraid that Mrs. Harrington is
the sort of person to do an injustice.  She almost told my mother that
she intended to leave all her money to one of them."

Again that little flicker of the Count's patient eyelids.

"Indeed!" he said.  "To which one?"

Agatha shrugged her shoulders and began playing.  "That is not so much
the question.  It is the principle--the injustice--that one objects to."

"Of course," murmured De Lloseta, with a little nod.  "Of course."

They went on playing, and in the other room Mrs. Harrington talked to
Luke.  Mrs. Ingham-Baker appeared to slumber, but her friend and
hostess suspected her of listening.  She therefore raised her voice at
intervals, knowing the exquisite torture of unsatisfied curiosity, and
Mrs. Ingham-Baker heard the word "Fitz," and the magic syllables
"money," more than once, but no connecting phrase to soothe her aching
mental palate.

"And is your life a hard one?" Mrs. Harrington was asking.  She had
been leading up to this question for some time--inviting his
confidence, seeking the extent of her own power.  A woman is not
content with possessing power; she wishes to see the evidence of it in
the lives of others.

"No," answered Luke, unconsciously disappointing her; "I cannot say
that it is."

He was strictly, sternly on his guard.  There was not the faintest
possibility of his ever forgiving this woman.

"And you are getting on in your career?"

"Yes, thank you."

Mrs. Harrington's grey eyes rested on his face searchingly.

"Perhaps I could help you," she said, "with my small influence, or--or
by other means."

"Thank you," he said again without anger, serene in his complete
independence.

Mrs. Harrington frowned.  A dream passed through her mind--a great
desire.  What if she could crush this man's pride?  For his six years'
silence had never ceased to gall her.  What if she could humble him so
completely that he would come asking the help she so carelessly offered?

With a woman's instinct she hit upon the only possible means of
attaining this end.  She did not pause to argue that a nature such as
Luke's would never ask anything for itself--that it is precisely such
as he who have no pride when they ask for another, sacrificing even
that for that other's sake.

Following her own thoughts, Mrs. Harrington looked pensively into the
room where Agatha was sitting.  The girl was playing, with a little
frown of concentration.  The wonderful music close to her ear was busy
arousing that small possibility.  Agatha did not know that any one was
looking at her.  The two pink shades of the piano candles cast a
becoming light upon her face and form.

Mrs. Harrington's eyes came surreptitiously round.  Luke also was
looking at Agatha.  And a queer little smile hovered across Mrs.
Harrington's lips.  The dream was assuming more tangible proportions.
Mrs. Harrington began to see her way; already her inordinate love of
power was at work.  She could not admit even to herself that Luke
FitzHenry had escaped her.  Women never know when they have had enough.

"How long are you to be in London?" she asked, with a sudden kindness.

"Only a fortnight."

"Well, you must often come and see me.  I shall have the Ingham-Bakers
staying with me a few weeks longer.  It is dull for poor Agatha with
only two old women in the house.  Come to lunch to-morrow, and we can
do something in the afternoon."

"Thank you very much," said Luke.

"You will come?"

"I should like nothing better."

And so the music went on--and the game.  Some played a losing game from
the beginning, and others played without quite knowing the stake.  Some
held to certain rules, while others made the rules as they went
along--as children do--ignorant of the tears that must inevitably
follow.  But Fate placed all the best cards in Mrs. Harrington's hand.

Luke and the Count Cipriani de Lloseta went out of the house together.
They walked side by side for some yards while a watchful hansom
followed.

"Can I give you a lift?" said De Lloseta at length.  "I am going down
to the Peregrinator's."

"Thanks, no.  I shall go straight to my rooms.  I have not had my
clothes off for three nights."

"Ah, you sailors!  I am going down to have my half-hour over a book to
compose my mind."

"Do you read much?"

De Lloseta called the cab with a jerk of his head.  Before stepping
into it he looked keenly into his companion's face.

"Yes, a good deal.  I read somewhere, lately, that it is never wise to
accept favours from a woman; she will always have more than her money's
worth.  Good-night."

And he drove away.



CHAPTER X.  THE GAME OPENS.

     Ce qu'on dit a l'etre a qui on dit tout n'est pas la moitie de
ce qu'on lui cache.

Agatha sent her maid to bed and sat down before her bedroom fire to
brush her hair.

Miss Ingham-Baker had, only four years earlier, left a fashionable
South Coast boarding-school fully educated for the battle of life.
There seem to be two classes of young ladies' boarding-schools.  In the
one they are educated with a view of faring well in this world, in the
other the teaching mostly bears upon matters connected with the next.
In the last-mentioned class of establishment the young people get up
early and have very little material food to eat.  So Mrs. Ingham-Baker
wisely sent her daughter to the worldly school. This astute lady knew
that girls who get up very early to attend public worship in the dim
hours, and have poor meals during the day, do not as a rule make good
matches.  They have no time to do their hair properly, and are not
urged so much thereto as to punctuality at compline, or whatever the
service may be.  And it is thus that the little habits are acquired,
and the little habits make the woman, therefore the little habits make
the match.  Quod erat demonstrandum.

So Agatha was sent to a worldly school, where they promenaded in the
King's Road, and were taught at an early age to recognise the glance of
admiration when they saw it.  They were brought up to desire nice
clothes, and to wear the same stylishly.  On Sunday they wore bonnets,
and promenaded with additional enthusiasm.  Their youthful backs were
straightened out by some process which the writer, not having been
educated at a girls' school, cannot be expected to detail.  They were
given excellent meals at healthy hours, and the reprehensible habits of
the lark were treated with contumely.  They were given to understand
that it was good to be smart always, and even smarter at church.
Religious fervour, if it ran to limpness of dress, or form, or mind,
was punishable according to law.  A wholesome spirit of competition was
encouraged, not in the taking of many prizes, the attending of many
services, or the acquirement of much Euclid, but in dress, smartness,
and the accomplishments.

"My girls always marry!" Miss Jones was wont to say with a complacent
smile, and mothers advertised it.

Agatha had been an apt pupil.  She came away from Miss Jones a finished
article.  Miss Jones had indeed looked in vain for Agatha's name in
that right-hand column of the Morning Post where fashionable
arrangements are noted, and in the first column of the Times, where
further social events have precedence.  But that was entirely Agatha's
fault.  She came, and she saw, but she had not hitherto seen anything
worth conquering.  So many of her school friends had married on the
impulse of the moment for mere sentimental reasons, remaining as awful
and harassed warnings in suburban retreats where rents are moderate and
the census on the flow.  If there was one thing Miss Jones despised
more than love in a cottage, it was that intangible commodity in a
suburban villa.

Agatha, in a word, meant to do well for herself, and she was dimly
grateful to her mother for having foreseen this situation and provided
for it by a suitable education.

She was probably thinking over the matter while she brushed her hair,
for she was deeply absorbed.  There was a knock at the door--a timid,
deprecatory knock.

"Oh, come in!" cried Agatha.

The door opened and disclosed Mrs. Ingham-Baker, stout and cringing, in
a ludicrous purple dressing-gown.

"May I come and warm myself at your fire, dear?" she inquired humbly;
"my own is so low."

"That," said Agatha, "is because you are afraid of the servants."

Mrs. Ingham-Baker closed the door and came towards the fire with
surreptitious steps.  It would not be truthful to say that she came on
tiptoe, her build not warranting that mode of progression. Agatha
watched her without surprise.  Mrs. Ingham-Baker always moved like that
in her dressing-gown.  Like many ladies, she put on stealth with that
garment.

"How beautifully the Count plays!" said the mother.

"Beautifully!" answered Agatha.

And neither was thinking of Cipriani de Lloseta.

Mrs. Ingham-Baker gave a little sigh, and contemplated her wool-work
bedroom slippers with an affection which their appearance certainly did
not warrant.  There was a suggestion of bygone defeats in sigh and
attitude--defeats borne with the resignation that followeth on habit.

"I don't believe," she said, "that he will ever marry again."

The girl tossed her pretty head.

"I shouldn't think any one would have him!"

She was not of the campaigners who admit defeat.  Mrs. Ingham-Baker
sighed again, and put out the other slipper.

"He must be very rich!--a palace in Barcelona--a palace!"

"Other people have castles in Spain," replied Agatha, without any of
that filial respect which our grandmothers were pleased to affect.
There was nothing old-fashioned or effete about Agatha--she was, on the
contrary, essentially modern.

The elder lady did not catch the allusion, and dived deep into thought.
She supposed that Agatha had met and danced with other rich Spaniards,
and could have any one of them by the mere raising of her little
finger.  Her attitude towards her daughter was that of an old
campaigner who, having done well in a bygone time, has the good sense
to recognise the deeper science of a modern warfare, being quite
content with a small command in the rear.

To carry out the simile, she now gathered from this conversational
reconnaissance that the younger and abler general at the front was
about to alter the object of attack.  She had, in fact, come in not to
warm, but to inform herself.

"Mrs. Harrington seemed to take to Luke," said Agatha, behind her hair.

"Yes," answered Mrs. Ingham-Baker, proceeding carefully, for she was
well in hand--"wonderfully so!  Poor Fitz seems to stand a very good
chance of being cut out."

"Fitz will have to look after himself," opined the young lady.  "Did
she say anything to you after I came to bed?  I came away on purpose."

Mrs. Ingham-Baker glanced towards the door, and drew her dressing-gown
more closely round her.

"WELL," she began volubly, "of course I said what a nice fellow Luke
was, so manly and simple, and all that.  And she quite agreed with me.
I said that perhaps he would get on after all and not bring disgrace
upon all her kindness."

"What do you mean by THAT?" inquired Agatha.

"I don't know, my dear, but I said it.  And she said she hoped so. Then
I asked her if she knew what his wages or salary, or whatever they are
called, amounted to, and what his prospects are.  She said she knew
nothing about his salary, but that his prospects were quite a different
matter.  I pretended I did not know what she meant.  So she gave a
little sigh and said that one could not expect to live for ever.  I
said that I was sure I wished some people could, and she smiled in a
funny way."

"You do not seem to have done it very well," the younger and more
scientific campaigner observed coldly.

"Oh, but it was all right, Agatha dear.  I understand her so well. And
I said I was sure that Luke would deserve anything he got; that of
course it was different for Fitz, because his life is all set out
straight before him.  And she said I was quite right."

The report was finished, and Agatha sat for some moments with the brush
on her lap looking into the fire with the deep thoughtfulness of a cool
tactician.

"I am SURE he was struck with you," said the mother fervently.

After all she was only fit for a very small command very far in the
rear.  She never saw the singular light in Agatha's eyes.

"Do you think so?" said the girl, half dreamily.

"I am sure of it."

Agatha began brushing her hair again.

"What makes you think so?" she inquired through the snaky canopy.

"He never took his eyes off you when you were playing the Count's
accompaniment."

The girl suddenly rose and went to the dressing-table.  The candles
there were lighted, one on each side of the mirror.  Agatha saw that
her mother was still admiring her bedroom slippers.  Then she looked at
the reflection of her own face with the smooth hair hanging straight
down over either shoulder.  She gazed long and curiously as if seeking
something in the pleasant reflection.

"Did she say anything more about Fitz?" she asked suddenly, with an
obvious change of the subject which Mrs. Ingham-Baker did not attempt
to understand.  She was not a subtle woman.

"Nothing."

Agatha came back and sat down.

"And you are quite sure she said exactly what you have told me, about
not expecting to live for ever."

"Quite."

Then followed a long silence.  A belated cab rattled past beneath the
windows.  There was apparently a cowl on the chimney connected with
Agatha's room, for at intervals a faint groaning sound came, apparently
from the fireplace.

Agatha leant forward with her chin on her two hands, her elbows on her
knees.  Her hair hung almost to the ground.  She was looking into the
coals with thoughtful eyes.  The elder tactician waited in respectful
silence.

"Suppose--" said the girl suddenly, and stopped.

"Yes, my darling."

"Suppose we accept the Danefords' invitation?"

"To go to Malta?"

"Yes, to go to Malta."

Mrs. Ingham-Baker fell into a puzzled, harassed reverie.  This modern
warfare was so complicated.  The younger, keener tactician did not seem
to demand an answer to her supposition.  She proceeded to follow out
the train of her own thoughts in as complete an absorption as if she
had been alone in the room.

"The voyage," she said, "would be a pleasant change if we selected a
good boat."

Mrs. Ingham-Baker reflected for a moment.

"We might go in the Croonah with Luke," she then observed timidly.

"Ye-es."

And after a little while Mrs. Ingham-Baker rose and bade her daughter
good-night.

Agatha remained before the fire in the low chair with her face resting
on her two hands, and who can tell all that she was thinking?  For the
thoughts of youth are very quick.  They are different from the thoughts
of maturity, inasmuch as they rise higher into happiness and descend
deeper into misery.  Agatha Ingham-Baker knew that she had her own life
to shape, with only such blundering, well-meant assistance as her
mother could give her.  She had found out that the world cannot pause
to help the stricken, or to give a hand to the fallen, but that it
always has leisure to cringe and make way for the successful.

Other girls had been successful.  Why should not she?  And if--and if--

The next morning at breakfast Mrs. Ingham-Baker took an opportunity of
asking Mrs. Harrington if she knew Malta.

"Malta," answered the grey lady, "is a sort of Nursery India.  I have
known girls marry at Malta, but I have known more who were obliged to
go to India."

"That," answered Mrs. Ingham-Baker, "is exactly what I am afraid of."

"Having to go on to India?" inquired Mrs. Harrington, looking over her
letters.

"No.  I am afraid that Malta is not quite the place one would like to
take one's daughter to."

"That depends, I should imagine, upon the views one may have respecting
one's daughter," answered the lady of the house carelessly.

At this moment Agatha came in looking fresh and smart in a tweed dress.
There was something about her that made people turn in the streets to
look at her again.  For years she had noted this with much
satisfaction.  But she was beginning to get a little tired of the
homage of the pavement.  Those who turned to glance a second time never
came back to offer her a heart and a fortune.  She was perhaps
beginning faintly to suspect that which many of us know--namely, that
she who has the admiration of many rarely has the love of one; and if
by chance she gets this, she never knows its value and rarely keeps it.

"I was just asking Mrs. Harrington about Malta, dear," exclaimed Mrs.
Ingham-Baker.  "It is a nice place, is it not, Marian?"

"I believe it is."

"And somehow I quite want to go there.  I can't think why," said Mrs.
Ingham-Baker volubly.  "It would be so nice to get a little sunshine
after these grey skies, would it not, dear?"

Agatha gave a little shiver as she sat down.

"It would be very nice to feel really warm," she said.  "But there is
the horrid sea voyage."

"I dare say you would enjoy that very much after the first two days,"
put in Mrs. Harrington.

"Especially if we select a nice large boat--one of those with two
funnels?" put in Mrs. Ingham-Baker.  "Now I wonder what boat we could
go by?"

"Luke's," suggested Mrs. Harrington, with cynical curtness.  There was
a subtle suggestion of finality in her tone, a tiniest note of
weariness which almost said--

"Now we have reached our goal."

"I suppose," said Mrs. Ingham-Baker doubtfully, "that it is really a
fine vessel?"

"So I am told."

"I really expect," put in Agatha carelessly, "that one steamer is as
good as another."

Mrs. Harrington turned on her like suave lightning.

"But one boat is not so well officered as another, my dear!" she said.

Agatha--not to be brow-beaten, keen as the older fencer--looked Mrs.
Harrington straight in the face.

"You mean Luke," she said.  "Of course I dare say he is a good officer.
But one always feels doubtful about trusting one's friends--does one
not?"

"One does," answered Mrs. Harrington, turning to her letters.



CHAPTER XI.  SHIPS UPON THE SEA.

     All such things touch secret strings
     For heavy hearts to bear.

"And you don't seem to care."

Agatha smiled a little inward smile of triumph.

"Don't I?" she answered, with a sidelong glance beneath her lashes.

Luke stared straight in front of him with set lips.  He looked a
dangerous man to trifle with, and what woman can keep her hands out of
such danger as this?

They were walking backwards and forwards on the broad promenade deck of
the Croonah, and the Croonah was gliding through the grey waters of the
Atlantic.  To their left lay the coast of Portugal smiling in the
sunshine.  To their right the orb of day himself, lowering cloudless to
the horizon.  Ahead, bleak and lonely, lay the dread Burlings.  The
maligned Bay of Biscay lay behind, and already a large number of the
passengers had plucked up spirit to leave the cabin stairs, crawling on
deck to lie supine in long chairs and talk hopefully of calmer days to
come.

Agatha had proved herself to be a good sailor.  She walked beside Luke
FitzHenry with her usual dainty firmness of step and confidence of
carriage.  Luke himself--in uniform--looked sternly in earnest.

They had been talking of Gibraltar, where the Croonah was to touch the
next morning, and Luke had just told Agatha that he could not go ashore
with her and Mrs. Ingham-Baker.

"Don't I?" the girl reiterated with a little sigh.

"Well, it does not sound like it."

"The truth is," said Agatha, "that I have an inward conviction that it
would only be more trouble than it is worth."

"What would be more trouble than it is worth?"

"Going ashore."

"Then you will not go?" he asked eagerly.

"I think not," she answered, with demure downcast eyes.

And Luke FitzHenry was the happiest man on board the Croonah.  There
was no mistaking her meaning.  Luke, who knew himself to be a
pessimist--a man who persistently looked for ill-fortune--felt that her
meaning could not well be other than that she preferred remaining on
board because he could not go ashore.

The dinner bell rang out over the quiet decks, and, with a familiar
little nod, Agatha turned away from her companion.

The next morning saw the Croonah speeding past Trafalgar's heights.
There was a whistling breeze from the west; and over the mountains of
Tarifa and the far gloomy fastness of Ceuta hung clouds and squalls.
The sea, lashed to white flecks, raced through the straits, and every
now and then a sharp shower darkened the face of the waters.  There was
something forbidding and mysterious in the scene, something dark and
foreboding over the coast-line of Africa. All eyes were fixed on the
Rock, now slowly appearing from behind the hills that hide Algeciras.

Luke was on duty on the bridge, motionless at his post.  It was a
simple matter to these mariners to make for the anchorage of Gibraltar,
and Luke was thinking of Agatha.  He was recalling a thousand little
incidents which came back with a sudden warm thrill into his heart, the
chilled, stern heart of a disappointed man.  He was recollecting words
that she had said, silences which she had kept, glances which she had
given him.  And all told him the same thing.  All went to the core of
his passionate, self-consuming heart.

The bay now lay before him, dotted here and there by close-reefed
sails.  A few steamers lay at anchor, and, beyond the old Mole, black
coal hulks peacefully stripped of rigging.  Suddenly Luke lifted the
lid of the small box affixed to the rail in front of him and sought his
glasses.  For some seconds he looked through the binoculars fixedly in
the direction of the Mole.  Then he moved towards the captain.

"That is the Kittiwake," he said.

"Thought it looked like her!" replied the captain, intent on his own
affairs.

Luke went back to his post.  The Kittiwake!  And he was not glad. It
was that that puzzled him.  He was not glad.  He was going to see Fitz
after many years, and twins are different from other brothers. They
usually see more of each other all through life.  They are necessary to
each other.  Fitz and Luke had always corresponded as regularly as
their roaming lives allowed.  But for three years they had never met.

Luke stood with beating heart, his eyes fixed on the trim
rakish-looking little gunboat lying at anchor immediately off the Mole.
He was suddenly breathless.  His light oil-skins oppressed him.  There
was a vague feeling within him that he had only begun to live within
the last two weeks--all before that had been merely existence.  And now
he was living too quickly, without time to define his feelings. But the
sensations were real enough.  It does not take long to acquire a
feeling.

After all he was not glad.  His attention was required for a few
moments to carry out an order, and he returned to his thought.  He did
not, however, think it out.  He only knew that if Agatha had not been
on board the Croonah he would have been breathlessly impatient to see
his brother.  Therefore he did not want Agatha and Fitz to meet.  And
yet Fitz was quite different from other men.  There was no harm in
Fitz, and surely he could be trusted to see Agatha for a few hours
without falling in love with her, without making Agatha love him.

Yet--Fitz had always succeeded where he, Luke, had failed.  Fitz had
always the good things of life.  It was all luck.  It had been luck
from the very beginning.  Another order required the second officer's
full mind and attention.  There were a thousand matters to be attended
to, for the Croonah was enormous, unwieldy.

In the execution of his duties Luke began presently to forget himself.
He did not attempt to define his thoughts.  He did not even reflect
that he knew so little of his brother that this meeting could not
possibly cause him this sudden uneasiness, this foreboding care, from
THAT side of the question.  He did not fear for Fitz to meet Agatha, he
really dreaded Agatha seeing Fitz.

The Croonah moved into her anchorage with that gentle strength which in
a large steamer seems to indicate that she is thinking about it and
doing it all herself.  For in these days there is no shouting, no call
of boatswain's whistle; and the ordinary observer hardly notices the
quiet deus ex machina, the man on the bridge.

Hardly had the anchor splashed home with a rattle of cable that
vibrated through the ship, when a small white boat shot out from behind
the smart Kittiwake, impelled by the short and regular beat of ten
oars.  There was a man seated in the stern enveloped in a large black
boat cloak--for Gibraltar harbour is choppy when the westerly breezes
blow--a man who looked the Croonah up and down with a curious searching
eye.  The boat shot alongside the vast steamer--the bowman neatly
catching a rope that was thrown to him--and the officer clambered up
the swaying gangway.

He pushed his way gently through the passengers, the cloak flying
partially open as he did so and displaying Her Majesty's uniform. He
treated all these people with that patient tolerance which belongs to
the mariner when dealing with landsmen.  They were so many sheep penned
up in a conveyance.  Well-dressed sheep, he admitted tacitly by the
withdrawal of his dripping cloak from their contact, but he treated
them in the bulk, failing to notice one more than another.  He utterly
failed to observe Agatha Ingham-Baker, dainty and fresh in blue serge
and a pert sailor hat.  She knew him at once, and his want of
observation was set down in her mind against him.  She did not want him
to recognise her.  Not at all. She merely wanted him to look at her,
and then to look again--to throw a passing crumb of admiration to her
greedy vanity, which lived on such daily food.

Fitz, intent on his errand, pushed his way towards the steps leading up
through the awning to the bridge.  He seemed to know by some sailor
instinct where to find it.  He paused at the foot of the iron steps to
give an order to the man who followed at his heel, and the attitude was
Luke's.  The onlookers saw at a glance who this must be.  The
resemblance was startling.  There was merely Luke FitzHenry over again,
somewhat fairer, a little taller, but the same man.

The captain gave a sudden bluff laugh when Fitz emerged on the little
spidery bridge far above the deck.

"No doubt who you are, sir," he said, holding out his hand.

Then he stepped aside, and the two brothers met.  They said nothing,
merely shaking hands, and Luke's eyes involuntarily went to the smart,
simple uniform half hidden by the cloak.  Fitz saw the glance and drew
his cloak hastily round him.  It was unfortunate.

And this was their meeting after three years.

"By George!" exclaimed Fitz, after a momentary pause, "she IS a fine
ship!"

Luke rested his hands on the white painted rail--almost a caress to the
great steamer--and followed the direction of his brother's glance,

"Yes," he admitted slowly, "yes, she is a good boat."

And then his deep eyes wandered involuntarily towards the tiny
Kittiwake--smart, man-of-war-like at her anchorage--and a sudden sharp
sigh broke from his lips.  He had not got over it yet.  He never would.

"So you have got away," he went on, "from Mahon at last?"

"Yes," answered Fitz.

"I should think you have had enough of Minorca to last you the rest of
your life," said Luke, looking abruptly down at the quarrelling boatmen
and the tangle of tossing craft beneath them.

"It is not such a bad place as all that," replied Fitz.  "I--I rather
like it."

There was a little pause, and quite suddenly Luke said--

"The Ingham-Bakers are on board."

It would almost seem that these twin minds followed each other into the
same train of thought.  Fitz frowned with an air of reflectiveness.

"The Ingham-Bakers," he said.  "Who are they?"

Luke gave a little laugh which almost expressed a sudden relief.

"Don't you remember?" he said.  "She is a friend of Mrs. Harrington's,
and--and there is Agatha, her daughter."

"I remember--stout.  Not the daughter, the old woman, I mean.  Oh--yes.
Where are they going?"

"To Malta."

It was perfectly obvious, even to Luke, that the Ingham-Bakers'
immediate or projective destination was a matter of the utmost
indifference to Fitz, who was more interested in the Croonah than in
her passengers.

They were both conscious of an indefinite feeling of disappointment.
This meeting after years of absence was not as it should be. Something
seemed to stand between them--a shadow, a myth, a tiny distinction.
Luke, with characteristic pessimism, saw it first--felt its chill,
intangible presence before his less subtle-minded brother.  Then Fitz
saw it, and, as was his habit, he went at it unhesitatingly

"Gad!" he explained, "I am glad to see you, old chap.  Long time, isn't
it, since we saw each other?  You must come back with me, and have
lunch or something.  The men will be awfully glad to make your
acquaintance.  You can look over the ship, though she is not much to
look at, you know!  Not up to this.  She is a fine ship, Luke!  What
can she steam?"

"She can do her twenty," answered the second officer of the Croonah,
indifferently.

"Yes, she looks it.  Well, can you get away now?"

Luke shook his head.

"No," he answered almost ungraciously, "I can't leave the ship."

"What!  Not to come and look over the Kittiwake?"  Fitz's face fell
visibly.  He did not seem to be able to realise that any one should be
equal to relinquishing without a murmur the opportunity of looking over
the Kittiwake.

"No, I am afraid not.  We have our discipline too, you know. Besides,
we are rather like railway guards.  We must keep up to time.  We shall
be under way by two o'clock."

Fitz pressed the point no further.  He had been brought up to
discipline since childhood--moreover, he was rather clever in a simple
way, and he had found out that it would be no pleasure but a pain to
Luke to board a ship flying the white ensign.

"Can I stay on board to lunch with you?" he asked easily.  "Goodness
only knows when we shall run against each other again.  It was the
merest chance.  We only got in last night.  I was just going ashore to
report when we saw the old Croonah come pounding in.  That"--he paused
and drew his cloak closer--"is why I am in my war-paint!  We are going
straight home."

"Stay by all means," said Luke.

Fitz nodded.

"I suppose," he added as an afterthought, "that I ought to pay my
respects to Mrs. Ingham-Baker?"

Luke's face cleared suddenly.  Fitz had evidently forgotten about
Agatha.

"I will ask them to lunch with us in my cabin," he said.

And presently they left the bridge.

In due course Fitz was presented to the Ingham-Bakers, and Agatha was
very gracious.  Fitz looked at her a good deal.  Simply because she
made him.  She directed all her conversation and eke her bright eyes in
his direction.  He listened, and when necessary he laughed a jolly
resounding laugh.  How could she tell that he was drawing comparisons
all the while?  It is the simple-minded men who puzzle women most.
Whenever Luke's face clouded she swept away the gathering gloom with
some small familiar attention--some reference to him in her
conversation with Fitz which somehow brought him nearer and set Fitz
further off.

Suddenly, on hearing that Fitz hoped to be in England within a week,
Mrs. Ingham-Baker fell heavily into conversation.

"I am afraid," she said, "that you will find our dear Mrs. Harrington
more difficult to get on with than ever.  In fact--he, he!--I almost
feel inclined to advise you not to try.  But I suppose you will not be
much in London?"

Fitz looked at her with clear, keen blue eyes.

"I expect to be there some time," he answered.  "I hope to stay with
Mrs. Harrington."

Mrs. Ingham-Baker glanced at Agatha, and returned somewhat hastily to
her galantine of veal.

Agatha was drumming on the table with her fingers.



CHAPTER XII.  A SHUFFLE.

     To love is good, no doubt, but you love best
     A calm safe life, with wealth and ease and rest.

The Croonah ran round Europa Point into fine weather, and the wise old
captain--who felt the pulse of the saloon with unerring touch--deemed
it expedient to pin upon the board the notice of a ball to be given on
the following night.  There was considerable worldly knowledge in this
proceeding.  The passengers still had the air of Europe in their lungs,
the energy of Europe in their limbs.  Nothing pulls a ship full of
people together so effectually as a ball. Nothing gives such absorbing
employment to the female mind which would otherwise get into hopeless
mischief.  Besides they had been at sea five days, and the captain knew
that more than one ingenuous maiden, sitting in thoughtful idleness
about the decks, was lost in vague forebodings as to the creases in her
dresses ruthlessly packed away in the hold.

The passengers were, in fact, finding their sea-legs, which, from the
captain's point of view, meant that the inner men and the outer women
would now require and receive a daily increasing attention. So he said
a word to the head cook, and to the fourth officer he muttered--

"Let the women have their trunks!"

When, on the evening of the ball, Agatha appeared at the door of her
mother's cabin, that good lady's face fell.

"What, dear?  Your old black!"

"Yes, dear, my old black," replied the dutiful daughter.  She was
arranging a small bouquet of violets in the front of her dress--a
bouquet she had found in her cabin when she went to dress.  Luke had,
no doubt, sent ashore for them at Gibraltar--and there was something of
the unknown, the vaguely possible, in his manner of placing them on her
tiny dressing-table, without a word of explanation, which appealed to
her jaded imagination.

There was some suggestion of recklessness about Agatha, which her
mother almost detected--something which had never been suggested in the
subtler element of London drawing-room.  The girl spoke in a short,
sharp way which was new to the much-snubbed rear-commander. Agatha
still had this when Luke asked her for a dance.

"Yes," she answered curtly, handing him the card and avoiding his eyes.

He stepped back to take advantage of the light of a swinging hurricane
lamp, and leant against the awning which had been closed in all round.

"How many may I have?" he asked.

She continued to look anywhere except in his direction.  Then quite
suddenly she gave a little laugh.

"All."

"What?" he added, with a catch in his breath.

"You may have them all."

There was a pause; then Agatha turned with a half-mocking smile, and
looked at him.  For the first time in her life she was really
frightened.  She had never seen passion in a man's face before.  It was
the one thing she had never encountered in the daily round of social
effort in London.  Not an evil passion, but the strong passion of love,
which is as rare in human beings as is genius.  He was standing in a
conventional attitude, holding her programme--and that which took the
girl's breath away lay in his eyes alone.

She could not meet his look, for she felt suddenly quite puny and small
and powerless.  She realised in that flash of thought that there was a
whole side of life of which she had never suspected the existence.
After all, she was learning the lesson that millions of women have to
learn before they quite realise what life is.

She smiled nervously, and looked hard at the little card in his strong,
still hands--wondering what she had done.  She saw him write his name
opposite five or six dances.  Then he handed her the card, and left her
with a grave bow--left her without a word of explanation, to take his
silence and explain it if she could.  That sense of the unknown in him,
which appealed so strongly to her, seemed to rise and envelop her in a
maze of thought and imagination which was bewildering in its
intensity--thrilling with a new life.

When he came back later to claim his first dance, he was quietly
polite, and nothing else.  They danced until the music stopped, and
Agatha knew that she had met her match in this as in other matters.

The dancers trooped out to the dimly-lighted deck, while the
quartermaster raised the awning to allow the fresh air to circulate.
Luke and Agatha went with the rest, her hand resting unsteadily on his
sleeve.  She had never felt unsteady like this before.  She was
conscious, probably for the first time in her life, of a strange,
creeping fear.  She was distinctly afraid of the first words that her
partner would say when they were alone.  Spread out over the broad deck
the many passengers seemed but a few.  It was almost solitude--and
Agatha was afraid of solitude with Luke.  Yet she had selected a dress
which she knew would appeal to him.  She had dressed for him--which
means something from a woman's point of view. She had welcomed this
ball with a certain reckless throb of excitement, not for its own sake,
but for Luke's.  The unerring instinct of her vanity had not played her
false.  She had succeeded, and now she was afraid of her success.
There is a subtle fear in all success, and an indefinite responsibility.

Luke knew the ship.  He led the way to a deserted corner of the deck,
with a deliberation which set Agatha's heart beating.

"What did you mean when you said I could have all the dances?" asked
Luke slowly.  His eyes gleamed deeply as he looked down at her.  And
Agatha had no answer ready.

She stood before him with downcast eyes--like a chidden child who has
been meddling with danger.

And suddenly his arms were round her.  She gave a little gasp, but made
no attempt to escape from him.  This was all so different, so new to
her.  There was something in the strong salt air blowing over them
which seemed to purify the world and raise them above the sordid cares
thereof.  There was something simple and strong and primitive in this
man--at home on his own element, all filled with the strength of the
ocean--mastering her, claiming her as if by force.

"What did you mean?" he asked again.

She pushed him away, and turning stood beside him with her two hands
resting on the rail, her back turned towards him.

"Oh, Luke," she whispered at length, "I can't be poor--I CAN'T--I
can't.  You do not know what it is.  It has always been such a
struggle--there is no rest in it."

It is said that women can raise men above the world.  How often do they
bring them down to it when they are raising themselves!

And Luke's love was large enough to accept her as she was.

"And if I were not poor?" he asked, without any of the sullen pride
that was his.

She answered nothing, and he read her silence aright.

"I will become rich," he said, "somehow.  I do not care how.  I will, I
will--Agatha!"

She did not dare to meet his eyes.

"Come," she said.  "Come--let us go back."

They danced together again, but Agatha refused to sit anywhere but
beneath the awning.  While they were dancing they did not speak.  He
never took his eyes off her, and she never looked at him.

Then, just as he was, with a pilot jacket exchanged for his dress coat,
Luke had to go on duty on the bridge.  While he stood there, far above
the lighted decks, alone at his post in the dark, keen and watchful,
still as a statue, the sound of the dance music rose up and enveloped
him like the echo of a happy dream.

Presently the music ceased, and the weary dancers went below, leaving
Luke FitzHenry to his own thoughts.

All the world seemed to be asleep except these two men--one motionless
on the bridge, the other alert in the dimly lighted wheelhouse.  The
Croonah herself seemed to slumber with the regular beating of a great
restless heart far down in her iron being.

The dawn was now creeping up into the eastern sky, touching the face of
the waters with a soft, pearly light.  A few straight streaks of cloud
became faintly outlined.  The moon looked yellow and deathlike.

Luke stood watching the rise of a new day, and with it there seemed to
be rising within him a new life.

Beneath his feet, in her dainty cabin, Agatha Ingham-Baker saw that
dawn also.  She was standing with her arms folded on the upper berth
breast high.  She had been standing there an hour.  She was alone in
the cabin, for Luke had secured separate rooms for the two ladies.

Agatha had not moved since she came down from the ball.  She did not
seem to be thinking of going to bed.  The large square port-hole was
open, and the cool breeze fluttered the lace of her dress, stirring the
dead violets at her breast.

Her finely cut features were set with a look of strong determination.
"I can't--I can't be poor," she was repeating to herself with a
mechanical monotony.



CHAPTER XIII.  A CHOICE.

     'Tis better far to love and be poor,
     Than be rich with an empty heart.

Mrs. Harrington was sitting in the great drawing-room in Grosvenor
Gardens, alone.  The butler was fuming and cleaning plate in his
pantry.  The maid was weeping in the workroom.  Mrs. Harrington had had
a busy afternoon.

"'Tis always thus when she's alone in the house," the cook had said,
with a grandiosity of style borrowed from the Family Herald.  It is
easy for the cook to be grandiose when the butler and the lady's-maid
are in trouble.  Thus philosophy walketh in at the back door.

Mrs. Harrington's sharp grey face twitched at times with a certain
restlessness which was hers when she had no one at hand to bully. She
could not concentrate her attention on the newspaper she held in her
hands, and at intervals her eyes wandered over the room in search of
something to find fault with.  She made the mistake common to persons
under such circumstances--she forgot to look in the mirror.  Mrs.
Harrington was tired of herself.  She wished someone would call.  At
the same time she felt a cordial dislike to all her friends.

It was a hopelessly grey afternoon early in December, and every one was
out of London.  Mrs. Harrington had a certain circle of
friends--middle-aged or elderly women, rich like herself, lonely like
herself--whom she despised.  They all rather disliked each other, these
women, but they visited nevertheless.  They dined together seriously;
keeping in mind the cook, and watchful over the wine. But the majority
of these ladies had gone away for the winter.  The Riviera was created
for such.

Mrs. Harrington, however, never went abroad in the winter.  She said
that she had travelled too much when she was younger--in the lifetime
of her husband--to care about it now.  The Honourable George Henry
Harrington had, in fact, lived abroad for financial reasons, and the
name was not of sweet savour in the nostrils of hotel-keepers.  The
married life referred to occasionally in cold tones by the Honourable
Mrs. Harrington had been of that order which is curtly called "cat and
dog," and likewise "hand to mouth."

Therefore Mrs. Harrington avoided the Continent.  She could easily, of
her affluence, have paid certain large debts which she knew to be
outstanding, but she held a theory that dead men owe nothing.  And with
this theory she lubricated an easy-going conscience.

The mistress of the large house in Grosvenor Gardens was wondering
discontentedly what she was going to do with herself until tea-time,
when she heard the sound of a bell ringing far down in the basement.
Despite the grand drawing-room, despite the rich rustle of her grey
silk dress, this great lady peeped from behind the curtain, and saw a
hansom cab.

A few minutes later the door was thrown open by the angry butler.

"Miss Challoner--Captain Bontnor."

Eve came in, and at her heels Captain Bontnor, who sheered off as it
were from the butler, and gave him a wide berth.

Mrs. Harrington could be gracious when she liked.  She liked now, and
she would have kissed her visitor had that young lady shown any desire
for such an honour.  But there was a faint reflex of Spanish ceremony
in Eve Challoner, of which she was probably unaware.  A few years ago
it would not have been noticeable, but to-day we are
hail-fellow-well-met even with ladies--which is a mistake, on the part
of the ladies.

"So you received my letter, my dear," said Mrs. Harrington.

"Yes," replied Eve.  "This is my uncle--Captain Bontnor."

Mrs. Harrington had the bad taste to raise her eyebrows
infinitesimally, and Captain Bontnor saw it.

"How do you do?" said Mrs. Harrington, with a stiff bow.

"I am quite well, thank you, marm," replied the sailor, with more
aplomb than Eve had yet seen him display.

Without waiting to hear this satisfactory intelligence, Mrs. Harrington
turned to Eve again.  She evidently intended to ignore Captain Bontnor
systematically and completely.

"You know," she said, "I am related to your father--"

"By marriage," put in Captain Bontnor, with simple bluntness.  He was
brushing his hat with a large pocket-handkerchief.

"And I have pleasant recollections of his kindness in past years.  I
stayed with him at the Casa d'Erraha more than once.  I was staying
there when--well, some years ago.  I think you had better come and live
with me until your poor father's affairs have been put in order."

Captain Bontnor raised his head and ceased his operations on the dusty
hat.  His keen old eyes, full of opposition, were fixed on Eve's face.
He was quite ready to be rude again, but women know how to avoid these
shallow places better than men, with a policy which is not always
expedient perhaps.

"Thank you," replied Eve.  "Thank you very much, but my uncle has
kindly offered me a home."

Mrs. Harrington's grey face suggested a scorn which she apparently did
not think it worth while to conceal from a person who wiped the inside
of his hat with his pocket-handkerchief in a lady's presence.

"But," she said coldly, "I should think that your uncle cannot fail to
see the superior advantages of the offer I am now making you, from a
social point of view, if from no other."

"I do see them advantages, marm," said the captain bluntly.  He looked
at Eve with something dog-like peering from beneath his shaggy eyebrows.

"Of course," continued Mrs. Harrington, ignoring the confession, "you
have been brought up as a lady, and are accustomed to refinement, and
in some degree to luxury."

"You needn't make it any plainer, marm," blurted out Captain Bontnor.
"I don't need you to tell me that my niece is above me.  I don't set up
for bein' anything nor what I am.  There's not much of the gentleman
about me.  But--"

He paused, and half turned towards Eve.

"But, 'cording to my lights, I'm seeking to do my duty towards the
orphan child of my sister Amelia Ann."

"Not overlooking the fact, I suppose, that the orphan child of your
sister Amelia Ann has a very fair income of her own."

Captain Bontnor smiled blandly, and smoothed his hat with his sleeve.

"Not overlooking that fact, marm," he said, "if you choose to take it
so."

Mrs. Harrington turned to Eve again with a faint reflex of her
overbearing manner towards the Ingham-Bakers and other persons who
found it expedient to submit.

"You will see at a glance," she said, "that it is impossible for you to
live with Captain Bontnor."

"I have already accepted his kind offer," returned the girl.  "Thank
you, nevertheless."

"But," said Mrs. Harrington, "that was before you knew that I was ready
to make a home for you."

Captain Bontnor had turned away.  He blew his nose so loudly that Mrs.
Harrington frowned.  There was something trumpet-like and defiant in
the sound.  Opposition had ever a strange effect on this spoilt woman.
She liked it, as serving to enhance the value of the wish which she
rarely failed to gratify in the end.

"You must remember your position," she continued.  "These are very
democratic days, when silly people think that all men are equal.  A
lady is nevertheless still a lady, and a gentleman a gentleman, though
one does not often meet them.  I wish you to come and live with me."

Eve's dark eyes flashed suddenly.  She glanced at her uncle, and said
nothing.

"A girl with money is a ready dupe to designing persons," added Mrs.
Harrington.

"I am saved that danger, for I have no money," replied Eve.

"Nonsense, child!  I know the value of land in Mallorca.  I see already
that you are being deceived."

She glanced significantly towards the captain, who was again smiling
blandly.

"The matter has been fully gone into," explained Eve, "by competent
persons.  The Val d'Erraha does not belong to me.  It was held by my
father only on 'rotas'--the Minorcan form of lease--and it has now been
returned to the proprietor."

Mrs. Harrington's keen face dropped.  She prided herself upon being a
woman of business, and as such had always taken a deep interest in the
affairs of other people.  It is to be presumed that women have a larger
mental grasp than men.  They crave for more business when they are
business-like, and thus by easy steps descend to mere officiousness.

Eve's story was so very simple and, to the ears of one who had known
her father, so extremely likely, that Mrs. Harrington had for the
moment nothing to say.  She knew the working of the singular system on
which land is to this day held in tenure in Majorca and Minorca, and
there was no reason to suppose that there was any mistake or deception
respecting the estate of the Val d'Erraha.

A dramatist of considerable talent, who is not sufficiently studied in
these modern times, has said that a man in his time plays many parts.
He left it to be understood that a woman plays only one. The business
woman is the business woman all through her life--she is never the
charitable lady, even for a moment.

Mrs. Harrington had wished to have the bringing out of a beautiful
heiress.  She had no desire to support a penniless orphan.  The matter
had, in her mind, taken the usual form of a contract in black and
white.  Mrs. Harrington would supply position and a suitable home--Eve
was to have paid for her own dresses--chosen by the elder
contractor--and to have filled gracefully the gratifying, if hollow,
position of a young person of means looking for a husband.

Mrs. Harrington's business habits had, in fact, kept her fully alive to
the advantages likely to accrue to herself; and the small fact that Eve
was penniless reduced these advantages to a mythical reward in the
hereafter.  And business people have not time to think of the hereafter.

It is possible that simple old Captain Bontnor in part divined these
thoughts in the set grey eyes, the grey wrinkled face.

"You'll understand, marm," he said, "that my niece will not be in a
position to live the sort o' life"--he paused, and looked round the
vast room, quite without admiration--"the sort o' life you're livin'
here.  She couldn't keep up the position."

"It would not be for long," said Mrs. Harrington, already weighing an
alternative plan.  She looked critically at Eve, noting, with the
appraising eye of a middle-aged woman of the world, the grace of her
straight young form, the unusual beauty of her face.  "If you could
manage to allow her sufficient to dress suitably for one season, I dare
say she would make a suitable marriage."

Eve turned on her with a flash of bright dark eyes.  "Thank you; I do
not want to make a suitable marriage."

Captain Bontnor laid his hand on her arm.

"My dear," he said, "don't take any heed of her.  She doesn't know any
better.  I have heard tell of such women, but"--he looked round the
room--"I did not look to meet with one in a house like this.  I did not
know they called themselves ladies."

Mrs. Harrington gasped.  She lived in a world where people think such
things as these, but do not say them.  Captain Bontnor, on the other
hand, had not yet encountered a person of whom he was so much afraid as
to conceal a hostile opinion, should he harbour such.

He was patting Eve's gloved hand as if she had been physically hurt,
and Eve smiled down into his sympathetic old face.  It is a singular
fact that utter worldliness in a woman seems to hurt women less than it
does men.

Mrs. Harrington, with frigid dignity, ignored Captain Bontnor, and
addressed herself exclusively to Eve.

"You must be good enough to remember," she said, "that I can scarcely
have other motives than those of kindness."

A woman is so conscious of the weak links in her chain of argument,
that she usually examines them publicly.

"I do remember that," replied Eve, rather softened by the grey
loneliness of this woman's life--a loneliness which seemed to be
sitting on all the empty chairs--"and I am very grateful to you.  I
think, perhaps, my uncle misunderstood you.  But--"

"Yes--but--"

"Under the circumstances, I think it will be wiser for me to accept his
kind offer, and make my home with him.  I hope to be able to find some
work which will enable me to--to help somewhat towards the household
expenses."

Mrs. Harrington shrugged her shoulders.

"As you like," she said.  "After a few months of a governess's life
perhaps you may reconsider your decision.  I know--"

She was going to say that she knew what it was, but she recollected
herself in time.

"I know," she said instead, "girls who have lived such lives."

With the air of Spain Eve Challoner seemed to have inhaled some of the
Spanish pride, which is as a stone wall against which charity and pity
may alike beat in vain.  From her superior height the girl looked down
on the keen-faced little woman.

"I am not in a position to choose," she said.  "I am prepared for some
small hardships."

Mrs. Harrington turned to ring the bell.  With the sudden caprice which
her money had enabled her to cultivate, she had taken a liking to Eve.

"You will have some tea?" she said.

Eve turned to thank her, and suddenly her heart leaped to her throat.
She caught her breath, and did not answer for a moment.

"Thank you," she said; and her eyes stole back to the mantelpiece,
where a large photograph of Fitz seemed to watch her with a quiet,
thoughtful smile.

The whole room appeared to be different after that.  Mrs. Harrington
seemed to be a different woman--the world seemed suddenly to be a
smaller place and less lonely.

During the remainder of the short visit they talked of indifferent
topics, while Captain Bontnor remained silent.  Mrs. Harrington's
caprice grew stronger, and before tea was over she said--

"My dear, if you will not come and live with me, at all events make use
of me.  Your uncle will, no doubt, have to make some small changes in
his household.  I propose that you stay with me a week or ten days,
until he is ready for you."

This with a slight conciliatory bow towards Captain Bontnor, who stared
remorselessly at the clock.

"Thank you; I should very much like to," said Eve, mindful of the
mantelpiece.



CHAPTER XIV.  A QUATRE.

     There is so much that no one knows,
     So much unreached that none suppose.

"I want you to put on a nice dress to-night.  I have two friends coming
to dine."

Eve looked up from the book she was reading, and Mrs. Harrington
tempered her curt manner of expressing her wishes with a rare smile.
She often did this for Eve's benefit, almost unconsciously.  In some
indefinite way she was rather afraid of this girl.

"I will do my best," answered Eve, her mind only half weaned from the
pages.

She had been ten days in the house, and the somewhat luxurious comfort
of it appealed to a faintly developed love of peace and ease which had
been filtered into her soul with the air of a Southern land.  She had
found it easier to get on with Mrs. Harrington than she at first
anticipated.  Her nature, which was essentially womanly, had in reality
long craved for the intimate sympathy and intercourse which only
another woman could supply.  There was something indolent and restful
in the very atmosphere of the house that supplied a distinct want in
the motherless girl's life.  There were a number of vague possibilities
of trouble in the world, half perceived, half divined by Eve; which
possibilities Mrs. Harrington seemed capable of meeting and fending off.

It was all indefinite and misty, but Eve felt at rest, and, as it were,
under protection, in the house of this hard, cold woman of the world.

"It can only be a black one," the girl answered.

"Yes; but people don't know what a black dress is until they have seen
one that has been made in Spain."

Eve did not return at once to her book.  She was, in fact, thinking
about her dress--being in no way superior to such matters.

When she came down into the drawing-room, an hour later, she found
awaiting her there the two men about whom she thought most.

Cipriani de Lloseta and Fitz were standing on the hearthrug together.
Mrs. Harrington had not yet come down.  They came forward together, the
Count taking her hand first, with his courteous bow. Fitz followed,
shaking hands in silence, with that simplicity which she had learned to
look for and to like in him.

"I wonder," said Eve, "why Mrs. Harrington did not tell me that you
were the two friends she expected to dinner?"

The Count smiled darkly.

"Perhaps our hostess does not know that we have met before--" he began;
and stopped suddenly when the door opened, and the rustle of Mrs.
Harrington's silk dress heralded her coming.

Her quick eyes flashed over them with a comprehensive appreciation of
the situation.

"You all seem to know each other," she said sharply.  "I knew that Fitz
had been of some service to you at D'Erraha; but I was not aware that
you knew the Count de Lloseta."

"The Count de Lloseta was very kind to me at Barcelona--on a matter of
business," explained Eve innocently.

Mrs. Harrington turned upon the Spaniard quickly, but nevertheless too
late to catch the warning frown which he had directed towards Eve.
Mrs. Harrington looked keenly into his face, which was blandly
imperturbable.

"Then you are the owner of D'Erraha?"

"I am."

Mrs. Harrington gave a strange little laugh.

"What a rich man you are!" she said.  "Come!  Let us go to dinner."

She took the Count's arm, and led the way to the dining-room.  She was
visibly absent-minded at first, as if pondering over something which
had come as a surprise to her.  Then she woke from her reverie, and,
turning to Fitz, said--

"And what do you think of the Baleares?"

"I like them," returned Fitz curtly.

He thought it was bad taste thus to turn the conversation upon a
subject which could only be painful to Eve.  He only thought of Eve,
and therefore did not notice the patient endurance of the Count's face.

De Lloseta was taking his soup with a slow concentration of his
attention upon its flavour, as if trying not to hear the conversation.
Mrs. Harrington looked sharply at him, and in doing so failed to
intercept a glance, exchanged by Fitz and Eve across the table.

"Why are you here?" Fitz seemed to be asking.

And Eve reassured him by a little smile.

"There is one advantage in your long exile at Mahon," pursued the
hostess inexorably.  "It must have been economical.  You could not have
wanted money there."

Fitz laughed.

"Hardly so Arcadian as that," he said.

The Count looked up.

"I suppose," he said, "that the port where one does not want money is
yet to be discovered?"

Mrs. Harrington, sipping her sherry, glanced at the speaker.

"Surely," she said lightly, "you are talking of what you know
absolutely nothing."

"Pardon me"--without looking up.

Mrs. Harrington laughed.

"Ah," she said, "we three know too much about you to believe that. Now,
what can a lone man like you want with money?"

"A lone man may happen to be saddled with a name of--well, of some
repute--an expensive luxury."

"And you think that a great name is worth spending a fortune upon, like
a garden, merely to keep it up?"

"I do."

"You think it worth all that?"

The dark, inscrutable eyes were raised deliberately to her face.

"Assuredly you must know that I do," he said.

Mrs. Harrington laughed, and changed the subject.  She knew this man's
face well, and her knowledge told her that he was at the end of his
patience.

"So you saw Luke at Gibraltar?" she said, turning to Fitz.

"Yes, for a short time.  I had never seen the Croonah before.  She is a
fine ship."

"So I understand.  So fine, indeed, that two friends of mine, the
Ingham-Bakers, were induced to go to Malta in her.  There is no limit
now to feminine enterprise.  Mothers are wonderful, and their daughters
no less so.  N'est-ce pas, Senor?"

"All ladies are wonderful!" said the Count, with a grave bow.  "They
are as the good God made them."

"I don't agree with you there," snapped Mrs. Harrington.  "So you saw
the Ingham-Bakers also, Fitz?"

"Yes; they lunched with us."

"And Agatha was very pleasant, no doubt?"

"Very."

"She always is--to men.  The Count admires her greatly.  She makes him
do so."

"She has an easy task," put in De Lloseta quietly.  It almost seemed
that there was some feeling about Agatha between these two people.

"You know," Mrs. Harrington went on, addressing herself to Fitz, "that
Luke and I have made it up.  We are friends now."

Fitz did not answer at once.  His face clouded over.  Seen thus in
anger, it was almost a hard face, older and somewhat worn.  He raised
his eyes, and they as suddenly softened, for Eve's eyes had met them,
and she seemed to understand.

"I am not inclined to discuss Luke," he said quietly.

"My dear, I did not propose doing so," answered Mrs. Harrington, and
her voice was so humble and conciliatory that De Lloseta looked up from
his plate, from one face to the other.

That Mrs. Harrington should accept this reproof thus humbly seemed to
come as a surprise to them all, except Fitz, who went on eating his
dinner with a singular composure.

It would appear that Mrs. Harrington had been put out of temper by some
small incident at the beginning of the dinner, and, like a spoilt
child, proceeded to vent her displeasure on all and sundry. In the same
way she would no doubt have continued, unless spoken sharply to, as
Fitz had spoken.

For now her manner quite changed, and the rest of the meal passed
pleasantly enough.  Mrs. Harrington now devoted herself to her guests,
and as carefully avoided dangerous subjects as she had hitherto
appeared to seek them.

After dinner she asked the Count to tune his violin, while she herself
prepared to play his accompaniment.

Fitz lighted the candles and set the music ready with a certain
neatness of hand rarely acquired by landsmen, and then returned to the
smaller drawing-room, where Eve was seated by the fire, needlework in
hand.

He stood for a moment leaning against the mantelpiece.  Perhaps he was
waiting for her to speak.  Perhaps he did not realise how much there
was in his long, silent gaze.

"How long have you been here?" he asked, when the music began.

"Ten days," she answered, without looking up.

"But you are not going to live here?"--with some misgiving.

"Oh no.  I am going to live with my uncle in Suffolk."

He moved away a few steps to pick up a fallen newspaper.  Presently he
came back to her, resuming his former position at the corner of the
mantelpiece.

It was Eve who spoke next--smoothing out her silken trifle of
needlework and looking at it critically.

"I never thanked you," she said, "for all your kindness to me at
D'Erraha.  You were a friend in need."

It was quite different from what it had been at D'Erraha.  Possibly it
was as different as were the atmospheres of the two places.  Eve seemed
to have something of London in the reserve of her manner--the easy
insincerity of her speech.  She was no longer a girl untainted by
worldliness--sincere, frank, and open.

Fitz was rather taken aback.

"Oh," he answered, "I could not do much.  There was really nothing that
I could do except to stand by in case I might be wanted."

Eve took up her needle again.

"But," she said, "that is already something.  It is often a great
comfort, especially to women, to know that there is some one 'standing
by,' as you call it, in case they are wanted."

She gave a little laugh, and then suddenly became quite grave.  The
recollection of a conversation they had had at D'Erraha had flashed
across her memory, as recollections do--at the wrong time.  The
conversation she remembered was recorded at the time--it was almost
word for word with this, but quite different.

Fitz was looking at her with his impenetrable simplicity.

"Will you oblige me," he said, "by continuing to look upon me in that
light?"

She had bent her head rather far over her work as he spoke, and as he
said the last five words her breath seemed to come with a little catch,
as if she had pricked her finger.

The musicians were just finishing a brilliant performance, and before
answering Fitz she looked round into the other room, nodded, smiled,
and thanked them.  Then she turned to him, still speaking in the light
and rather indifferent tone which was so new to him, and said--

"Thank you very much, but of course I have my uncle.  How--how long
will you be--staying on shore?  You deserve a long leave, do you not?"

"Yes, I suppose I do," said Fitz absently.  He had evidently listened
more to the voice than the words.  He forgot to answer the question.
But she repeated it.

"How long do you get?" she asked, hopelessly conversational.

"About three weeks."

"Is that all?  Ah! here is tea.  I wonder whether I ought to offer to
pour it out!"

But Mrs. Harrington left the piano, and said that her sight was failing
her.  She had had enough music.

During the rest of the evening Fitz took one or two opportunities of
looking at Eve to discover, if he could, what the difference was that
he found in her.  He had left a girl in Majorca--he found a woman in
London.  That was the whole difference; but he did not succeed in
reducing it to so many words.  He had passed most of his life at sea
among men.  He had not, therefore, had much opportunity of acquiring
that doubtful knowledge--the knowledge of women--the only item, by the
way, which men will never include among the sciences of existence.
Already they know more about the stars than they do about women.  Even
if Fitz had possessed this knowledge he would not have turned it to
account.  The wisest fail to do that. We only make use of our knowledge
of women in the study of those women with whom other men have to do.

"Fitz has grown rather dull and stupid," said Mrs. Harrington, when the
two guests had taken their leave.

Eve was folding up her work, and did not answer.

"Was he like that in Mallorca?" continued the grey lady.

"Oh--I think so.  He was very quiet always."



CHAPTER XV.  DON QUIXOTE.

     They also serve who only stand and wait.

"Come down to my club and have a cigar!"

The Count stood under a yellow lamp enveloped in his fur-lined coat,
looking with heavy, deep-browed eyes at his young companion.

Fitz paused.  The Count had been kind to Eve.  Fitz had noticed his
manner towards the girl.  He liked Cipriani de Lloseta--as many
did--without knowing why.

"Thanks," he said, "I should like to."

The Count's club was a small and a very select one.  It was a club with
a literary tendency.  The porter who took charge of their coats had the
air of a person who read the heavier monthly reviews.  He looked upon
Fitz, as a man of outdoor tastes, with some misgiving.

The Count led the way up to the luxurious silent smoking-room, where a
few foreign novels and a host of newspapers littered the tables.

As they entered the room a man looked up from his paper with some
interest.  He was a peculiar-looking man, with a keen face, streaked by
suffering--a face that was always ready to wince.  This man was a
humorist, but he looked as if his own life had been a tragedy.  He
continued to look at De Lloseta and Fitz with a quiet scrutiny which
was somewhat remarkable.  It suggested the scrutiny of a woman who is
taking notes of another's dress.

More particularly perhaps he watched the Count, and the keen eyes had a
reflective look, as if they were handing that which they saw, back to
the brain behind them for purpose of storage.

The Count met his eyes and nodded gravely.  With a little nod and a
sudden pleasant smile the other returned to the perusal of his evening
paper.

Cipriani de Lloseta drew forward a deep chair, and with a courteous
gesture invited Fitz to be seated.  He took a similar chair himself,
and then leant forward, cigar-case in hand.

"You know Mallorca," he said.

Fitz took a cigar.

"Yes," he answered, turning and looking into the Count's face with a
certain honest interest.  He was thinking of what Eve had said about
this man.  "Yes--I know Mallorca."

The Count struck a match and lighted his cigar with the air of a
connoisseur.

"I am always glad," he said conversationally, "to meet any one who
knows Mallorca.  It--was my home.  Perhaps you knew?"

And through the blue smoke the quick dark eyes flashed a glance.

"I saw your name--on the map," returned Fitz.

The Count gave a little Spanish deprecatory nod and wave of the hand,
indicating that it was no fault of his that an historical name should
have attached itself to him.

"Do you take whisky--and soda?" inquired the Count.

"Thanks."

De Lloseta called the waiter and gave the order with a slight touch of
imperiousness which was one of the few attributes that stamped him as a
Spaniard.  The feudal taint was still running in his veins.

"Tell me," he went on, turning to Fitz again, "what you know of the
island--what parts of it--and what you did there."

In some ways Fitz was rather a simple person.

"Oh!" he answered unconsciously.  "I went to D'Erraha mostly.  I used
to sail across from Ciudadela to Soller--along the coast, you know."

"And from Soller?"

"From Soller I rode by the Valdemosa road, and then across the mountain
and through that narrow valley up to the Val d'Erraha."

The Count was smoking thoughtfully.

"And you were happy there?" he said.

Fitz looked pensively into his long tumbler.

"Yes."

"I also," said the Count.  Then he seemed to remember his duties as
host.  "Is that cigar all right?" he asked.

"I think it is the best I have ever smoked," replied Fitz quietly; and
the Count smiled.

The two men sat there in a long silence--each thinking his own
thoughts.  They were just the sort of men to do it.  No other but
Cipriani de Lloseta would have sat with that perfect composure, wrapt
in an impenetrable Spanish silence, providing with grave dignity such a
very poor evening's entertainment.  And Fitz seemed quite content.  He
leant back, gravely smoking the good cigar. There seemed to be some
point of complete sympathy between them--possibly the little sunlit
island of the Mediterranean where they had both been happy.

The poem of a man's life is very deeply hidden, and civilisation is the
covert.  The immediate outcome of civilisation is reserve and--nous
voila.  Are we not increasing our educational facilities with a blind
insistence day by day?  One wonders what three generations of cheap
education will do for the world.  Already a middle-aged man can note
the slackening of the human tie.  Railway directors, and other persons
whose pockets benefit by the advance of civilisation, talk a vast deal
of rubbish about bringing together the peoples of the world.  You can
connect them, but you cannot bring them together.  Moreover, a
connection is sometimes a point of divergence.  In human affairs it is
more often so than otherwise.

True, a generation lay between these two men, but it was not that that
tied their tongues.  It was partially the fact that Cipriani de Lloseta
had moved with the times--had learnt, perhaps, too well, to acquire
that reserve which is daily becoming more noticeable among men.

Nevertheless, it was he who spoke first.

"I asked you to come and smoke a cigar with me for a purpose," he said.

Fitz nodded.

"Yes," he answered; "I thought so."

A shadowy smile acknowledged this simple statement of a simple fact.
The Count leant forward on his seat, resting his somewhat hollow cheek
on his hand and his elbow on the arm of his chair.

"Some years ago," he said, "before you were born, I passed through
a--well, a bad time.  One of those times, I take it, when a man finds
out the difference between a friend and an acquaintance.  The
circumstances would not interest you.  They are essentially personal.
Some men, and many women--I am not cynical, that is the last resource
of one who has himself to blame, I am merely stating a fact--many women
turned their backs upon me.  There was, however, one man--an
Englishman--who held to me with that unflinching courage of his own
opinion which makes an Englishman what he is.  I accepted nothing from
him at the time.  In fact, he could do nothing for me. I think he
understood.  An Englishman and a Spaniard have much in common.  He is
dead now.  It was Challoner."

Fitz nodded.  The Count changed his position slightly.

"I want you to use what influence you have with Miss Challoner.  She is
proud."

Fitz made no attempt to disclaim the implied influence.

"Yes," he said; "I know."

And he looked at the end of his cigar with a deep interest.  The man
who loves a proud woman loves her pride.  He is also a happy man,
because her pride will kill her vanity, and it is a woman's vanity that
spoils a husband's love.

"It would be a great satisfaction to me," the Count went on, "to pay
off in some small degree the debt of gratitude which I never even
acknowledged to Challoner.  Eve"--he paused, and repeated the name with
a certain sense of enjoyment--"Eve is not fully equipped with worldly
wisdom.  Thank God, for I hate a worldly-wise woman.  She is hardly old
enough or--plain enough to fight her own battles."

Fitz gave a sudden, sharp sigh, which made the Count pause for a moment.

"You also have received kindness from Challoner," went on the elder
man, after a short silence.

Fitz nodded comprehensively.

"And, like myself," the Count continued, rather quickly, "you are
naturally interested in his daughter, and sorry for her in her great
change of circumstances.  Now, it has occurred to me that together we
might do something towards helping her.  You know her better than I do.
I only know that she is proud."

"Very much to her credit," put in Fitz, looking fixedly at his own
boots.

"Entirely so.  And I respect her for it.  Unfortunately, assistance
could hardly come from you--a young man.  Whereas, I might be her
grandfather."

He looked up with a smile--keen, black-haired, lithe of frame--a young
man in appearance.

"We might help each other," he added, "you and I, quite alone. Captain
Bontnor is a very worthy old fellow, but--" and he shrugged his
shoulders.  "We cannot leave her to the wayward charity of a capricious
woman!" he added, with sudden bluntness.

He looked rather wonderingly at Fitz, who did not respond to this
suggestion, as he had expected him to do.  The coalition seemed so
natural and so eminently practical, and yet the sailor sat coldly
listening to each proposition as it fell from his companion's lips,
weighing it, sifting it with a judicial, indifferent apathy.

The Count de Lloseta threw himself back in his chair, and awaited, with
all the gravity of his race, the pleasure of his companion.  At length
Fitz spoke, rather deliberately.

"I think," he said, "you mistake the footing upon which I stand with
respect to Miss Challoner.  I shall be most happy to do all in my
power; but I tell you frankly that it does not amount to much.  I am
indebted to her indirectly for some very pleasant visits to D'Erraha;
her father was very kind to me.  Hardly sufficient to warrant anything
that would look like interference on my part."

The Count was too discreet a man to press the point any further.

"All this unfortunate difficulty would have been easily averted had I
been less stupid.  I shall never cease to regret it."

He spoke conversationally, flicking the end of his cigar neatly into
the fire, and without looking at Fitz.

"I never foresaw the natural tendency of lawyers to complicate the
affairs of life.  My man in Palma was unfortunately zealous."

Fitz nodded.

"Yes," he said, "I was there."

Cipriani de Lloseta glanced at him sharply.

"I am glad of that," he said.  "It was very stupid of me.  I ought to
have telegraphed to him to hold his tongue."

"But Miss Challoner could not have accepted the Val d'Erraha as a
present?"

"Oh yes, she could, if she had not known.  These little things are only
a matter of sentiment."

Fitz leant forward, looking into the Count's face without attempting to
conceal his surprise.

"Do you mean to say you would have given it to her?" he asked.

"No; I should have paid it to her in settlement of a debt which I owed
to her father."

The Count moved rather uneasily in his chair.  His eyes fell before his
companion's steady gaze.

"Another matter of sentiment," suggested Fitz.

De Lloseta shrugged his shoulders.

"If you will."

They lapsed into silence again.  The Count was puzzled by Fitz, as Fitz
in his turn had been puzzled earlier in the evening by Eve.  It was
merely the old story of woman the incomprehensible, and man the
superior--the lord of the universe--puzzled, completely mystified, made
supremely miserable or quite happy by her caprice of a moment.

It was a small thing that stood between these two men, preventing them
from frankly co-operating in the scheme which both had at heart.  It
was nothing but the tone of a girl's voice, the studied silence of a
girl's eyes, which had once been eloquent.

It was getting late.  A discreet clock on the mantelpiece declared the
hour of midnight in deliberate cathedral chime.  Fitz looked up, but he
did not move.  He liked Cipriani de Lloseta.  He had been prepared to
do so, and now he had gone further than he had intended. He wanted him
to go on talking about Eve, for he thirsted in his dumbly enduring way
for more details of her life.  But he would not revert to the subject.
Rather than that he would go on enduring.

While they were sitting thus in silence, the only other occupant of the
room--the man with the pain-drawn face--rose from his seat, helping his
legs with unsteady hands upon either arm of the chair. He threw the
paper down carelessly on the table, and came across the room towards
the Count de Lloseta.  He was a surprisingly tall man when he stood up;
for in his chair he seemed to sink into himself. His hair was
grey--rather long and straggly--his eyes hazel, looking through
spectacles wildly.  His cheeks were very hollow, his chin square and
bony.  Here was a man of keen nerves and quick to suffer.

"Well," he said to Lloseta, "I haven't seen you for some time."

"I've been away."

The tall man looked down at him with the singular scrutiny already
mentioned.

"Spain?"

"Spain."

He turned away with a little nod, but stopped before he had gone many
paces.

"And when are you going to write those sketches of Spanish life?" he
asked, with a cheery society laugh, which sounded rather incongruous.
"Never, I suppose.  Well, the loss is mine.  Good-night, Lloseta."

He went away without looking back.

"Do you know who that is?" the Count asked Fitz when the door was
closed.

Fitz had risen, with his eye on the clock.

"No.  But I seem to know his face."

The Count looked up with a smile.

"You ought to.  That was John Craik."



CHAPTER XVI.  BROKEN.

                                The Powers
     Behind the world that make our griefs our gains.

The small town of Somarsh, in Suffolk, consists of one street running
up from the so-called harbour.  At one end is the railway-station; at
the other the harbour and the sea, and that is Somarsh. There are
records that in days gone by--in the days of east coast
prosperity--there was a Mayor of Somarsh, or Southmarsh, as it was then
written.  But Ichabod!

All Somarsh was in the street one morning after Fitz had gone to sea
again, and those of the women who were not talking loudly were weeping
softly.  The boats were not in yet, but the weather was fine, and the
still, saffron sea was dotted with brown sails.  There was nothing
wrong with the boats.

No; the trouble was on shore, as it mostly is.  It came not from the
sea, but from men.  It was pinned upon the door of Merton's Bank in the
High Street.  Its form was unintelligible, for the wording of the
notice was mostly outside the Suffolk vocabulary.  There was something
written in a clerkly hand about the withdrawal of "financial facilities
necessitating a stoppage of payment pending reconstruction."

But the people in the street were saying that Merton's was "broke." The
constable said so, and he was a recognised authority on matters
pertaining to dry land and the law.  The door was locked on the inside,
the shutters were up, the blinds down, as if mourning the death of a
good East county credit.

"And them a drivin' behind their two horses," said one old
weather-beaten fisherman, who was suspected of voting on the wrong side
at electioneering time.

Some shook their heads, but the word went no farther, for the man who
does his business on the great waters has a vast respect for ancient
institutions.  And Merton's had been a good bank for many generations.

"P'raps," said an old woman who had nothing to lose--for the sea had
even kept her corpses from her--"p'raps what they say 'bout
reconstruction may be all right.  But here comes the capt'n."

The crowd turned like one man and watched the advent of Captain Bontnor.

The old man was dressed in his best pilot cloth suit.  He had worn it
quite recklessly for the last month, ever since Eve had come to live
with him.  He had been interrupted in his morning walk--his
quarter-deck tramp--forty times the length of his own railing in front
of Malabar Cottage.  The postman bringing letters for Eve, had told him
that there was trouble down in the town, and that he would likely be
wanted.

When he saw where the crowd was stationed he caught his breath.

"No," he said aloud to himself, "no, it can't be Merton's."

And when he joined the townspeople they saw that his sunburnt, rugged
face was grey as ashes.

"Mates," he said, "what is it?"

"Merton's is broke--Merton's is broke!" they answered, clearing a way
for him to read the notice for himself.  In Somarsh Captain Bontnor was
considered quite a scholar.  As such he might, perhaps, have deciphered
the clerkly handwriting in a shorter time than he now required, but on
the east coast a reputation is not easily shaken.

They waited for the verdict in silence.  After five minutes he turned
round and his face gave some of them a shock.  His kindly blue eyes had
a painfully puzzled, incompetent look, which had often come across them
in Barcelona and in London.  But in Somarsh only Eve was familiar with
it.

"Yes, mates," he said, falling back into his old seafaring vernacular,
forgetful of his best suit, "yes, shipmates, as far as I rightly
understand it, the bank's broken.  And--and there's some of us that's
ruined men."

He stood for a moment looking straight in front of him--looking very
old and not quite fit for life's battle.  Then he moved away.

"I'll just go and tell my niece," he said.

They watched him stump away--sturdy, unbroken, upright--still a man.

"It's a hard end to a hard life," said the old woman who had suggested
hope; and being only human, they fell to discussing the event from the
point at which it affected their own lives.

Malabar Cottage stood at the top end of the High Street--almost by
itself--looking out over the little green plot of common land, where
the coastguard flagpost stands towards the sea.  It was a low-roofed,
solidly built cottage--once a coastguard station, but superseded in the
heyday of east coast smuggling by a larger station further up the hill.
There was a little garden in front, which the captain kept himself,
growing such old-fashioned flowers as were content with his ignorant
handling.  The white jasmine ran riot over the portico.

Eve had apparently received a letter of some importance, for she was
standing at the gate waiting for him.  She ran out hatless to see him
on his quarter-deck, and to her surprise found him not.  She soon saw
him coming, however, and to beguile the time fell to reading her letter
a second time, with a little frown, as if the caligraphy gave her
trouble.

She did not look up until he was quite close.

"Uncle," she cried, "what is the matter?"

He gave a smile, which was painfully out of place on his bluff
features--it was wan and twisted.

"Nothing, my dearie; nothing."

He fumbled at the gate, and she had to find the latch for him.

"Just come below--I mean indoors, my dear.  I've had some news.  I dare
say it will be all right--but just at first, you understand, it is a
little--keen."

He bustled through the porch, and Eve followed him.  She watched him
hang up his old straw hat, standing on tiptoe with a grunt, as was his
wont.

"I must unship that peg and put it a bit lower," he said, as he had
said a hundred times before.

Then he went into the little dining-room and sat somewhat heavily down,
with his two hands resting on his knees.  He looked puzzled.

"Truth is, my dear," he said breathlessly, "I don't seem to take to
this long-shore life.  I--I rather think of going back to sea. There's
plenty will give me a ship.  And I want you to keep this cottage nice
for me, dearie, against my coming home."

He paused, looking round the room with a poor simulation of interest at
the quaint ornaments and curiosities which he had brought home from
different parts of the world.  He looked at the ceiling and the
carpet--anywhere, in fact, except at Eve.  Then he pushed his fingers
through his thick grey hair, making it stand on end in a ludicrous
manner.

"I've got all my bits of things collected here--just bits of
things--oh, dear!--oh, dear--Eve, my child, I wonder why the Almighty's
gone and done this?"

Eve was already sitting on the arm of his chair, stroking back his hair
with her tender fingers.

"What is it, uncle?" she asked.  "Tell me."

"Merton's," he answered.  "Merton's, and them so safe!"

"Is it only money?" cried Eve.  "Is that all?"

"Yes," he answered rather wearily, "that's all.  But it's money that's
took me fifty-five years to make."

"And had you it all in Merton's Bank?"

"Yes, dearie, all."

"But are you sure they have failed--that there is no mistake?"

"Quite sure.  I've read it myself pinned on the door, and the shutters
up, like a thing you read of in the newspapers.  No, it's right.
There's not often a mistake about bad news."

Eve bent over him very tenderly and kissed him.  He was holding her
hand between his, patting it gently with his rough, weather-beaten
fingers.  He was looking straight in front of him with that painful
look of helplessness which had earned him the friendship of Lord
Seahampton in Barcelona.

"But," said the girl at length, "you cannot go to sea again."

She knew that he would never get a ship, for his seamanship, like all
other things that were his, was hopelessly superannuated.  He was not
fit to be trusted with a ship--no owner would dream of it, no crew
would sail under him.

"There's men," said the captain humbly, "who learnt their seamanship
from me--who sailed under me--p'raps one of them would give me a berth
as first mate or even second mate under him--for a shipmate they would
do it."

Captain Bontnor had fallen behind the times even in his sentiments. He
did not know that in these days of short voyages, of Seamen's Unions,
and Firemen's Friendlies and Stokers' Guilds, a shipmate is no longer a
special friend--the tie is broken, as are many other ties, by the
advance of education.

Then the old man pulled himself together, and smiled bravely at his
niece.

"It is not for myself that I'm worrying," he said, "but for you.  I
don't quite see my way clear yet.  It's sort of sharp and sudden.  I
cannot get the poor Mertons out of my head--people that have been
accustomed to their carriages and all.  It's hard for them!  You see,
what they say is that their financial facilities have been withdrawn,
and I dare say nobody is to blame.  It is just what they call the hand
of God, in a bill of lading--just the hand of God."

"Yes, dear," answered Eve.  "And now I am going to serve out a glass of
sherry; you want it after your quick walk.  That is what you did at
sea, you served it out, did you not?"

"He, he! yes, dearie; that is it."

His rugged hand shook as he drank the wine.

"Only," he went on, after wiping his moustache vigorously with a red
pocket-handkerchief--"only it was rum, dearie--rum, you know, for heavy
weather.  It puts heart into the men."

His face suddenly clouded over again.

"And we've run into heavy weather, haven't we?  Just the hand of God."

"Finish the glass," said Eve, and she stood over him while he drank the
wine.

"And now," she went on, "listen to me.  I have had a very important
letter, which could hardly have come at a more opportune moment.  In
fact, I think we may call it also . . . what they say in a bill of
lading."

She opened the letter, as if about to read it aloud, and on glancing
through she seemed to change her mind.

"It is from Mrs. Harrington," she said.  "It is a very kind letter."

She looked at her uncle, whose face had suddenly hardened.  He seemed
to be schooling himself to hear something unpleasant.

"Ay!" he muttered, "ay! I suppose she'll get her way now.  I suppose I
can't hope to keep you now.  She'll get you--she'll get you."

"Then I think you are a very mean old man!" exclaimed Eve.  "I don't
believe you are a sailor at all.  You are what you call a land-lubber,
if you think that I am the sort of person to accept your kindness when
you are prosperous, and then--and then when heavy weather comes to go
away and leave you."

The old man smiled rather wanly, and fumbled with the red
pocket-handkerchief.

"As it happens, Mrs. Harrington does not ask me to go and stay with
her--she asks me--"  She paused and laid her hand on his shoulder
gently.  "She asks me--to accept money."

Captain Bontnor sat upright.

"Ay-y-y," he said, "charity."

"Yes," said Eve quietly, "charity; and I'm going to accept it."

Captain Bontnor scratched his head.  His manners were not, as has
already been stated, remarkable for artificiality or superficial
refinement.  He screwed up his features as if he were swallowing
something nasty.

"Read me the letter," he said.

Eve opened the missive again, and looked at it.

"She puts it very nicely," she said.  "She asks if you will permit me
to accept a dress allowance from a rich woman who does not always spend
her money discreetly."

It must be admitted that Mrs. Harrington's nice way of putting it lost
nothing by its transmission through Eve's lips.

Thus poor Charity creeps in wherever she can shelter.  She is not
proud.  She does not ask to be accepted for her own sake; though Heaven
knows she frequently is.  She masquerades in any costume--she accepts
the humiliation of any disguise.  She is ready to be cast down before
swine, or raised high before the eyes of fools.  She is used as a tool
or a stepping-stone--the humble handmaid of the tuft-hunter and the
toady.  She is dragged through the mire of the slums to the dwellings
of the wealthy and idle.  She is hounded up and down the world--the
plaything of Fashion, the trap of the unwary, the washerwoman of the
unclean who wish to try the paths of virtue--for a change.  And she is
still Charity, and she lives strong and pure in herself.  It has been
decreed that we shall ever have the poor beside us, and so long shall
we also possess those who live on them.

Charity begetteth charity, and it was for Charity's sake that Eve
Challoner took the bitter bread to herself, and accepted Mrs.
Harrington's offer.

Her own pride lay between her and this woman whom she knew to be
capricious, uncertain, lacking the quality of justice.  Her duty
towards Captain Bontnor lay between her and high Heaven.

So Eve Challoner learnt her first lesson in that school where we all
are called to study sooner or later--the school of Adversity; where
some of us pass creditably, whilst others are ploughed, and a few--a
very few--take honours.



BOOK THE SECOND.



CHAPTER I.  BITS OF LIFE.

                     Some far-off touch
     Of greatness, to know well I am not great.

The local house-agent anticipated no difficulty in letting Malabar
Cottage, furnished, at a good weekly rental; and in due course a dreamy
clergyman, with a wife who was anything but dreamy, came and saw and
hired.  The wide-awake wife was so interested in Eve that she forgot to
settle several details which came to her mind afterwards.  Her
curiosity was so aroused that the special cupidity belonging to the
wife of the dreamy clergyman was for the moment allayed, and she forgot
to drive a hard bargain.

Moreover, Eve's manner was not exactly encouraging to the would-be
bargainer.  A stupendous ignorance of the tricks of furnished
house-letting, combined with a certain lofty contempt for details,
acquired in Spain, where such contempt is thoroughly understood,
completely baffled the clergyman's wife.  She concluded that Eve was a
very stupid and ignorant girl, a poor housekeeper, and an incompetent
woman of the world; and yet she was afraid of her, simply because she
did not understand her.  Jews, poor men's wives, and other persons who
live by haggling, have a subtle fear of those who will not haggle.

So Malabar Cottage was let; and in due time the sad day arrived when
Captain Bontnor had to bid farewell to his "bits of things."  These
"bits of things" were in reality bits of his life--and a human life is
not so long nor so interesting an affair that we can afford lightly to
break off any portion, to throw it away, or even to let it out on hire.

Captain Bontnor wandered rather disconsolately round the rooms after
breakfast, and as Eve was with him he gave her a short inventory of
these pieces of his life.

"That there harpoon," he said, pointing to a rusty relic on the wall
above the mantelpiece, "was given to me by the finest whaling captain
that ever found his way into the North water.  When I first went to sea
I thought I'd like to be a whaler; but two voyages settled that fancy.
I'm told they shoot their harpoons out of a gun nowadays--poor sport
that!  And there's no sport like whalin'.  Two thousand pounds at one
end of a line and your own life at the other--that's finer sport than
these Cockney partridge-shooters know of.

"And that's my seal-pick--many a seal have I killed with that.  That
there's the portrait of the True Love, three-masted schooner, built at
Littlehampton by Harvey.  Sailed second mate, first mate, and master in
her, I did.  Then she was sold; and a lubber went and--and threw her on
the Kentish Knock in a south-easterly gale.  She was a pretty ship!  I
felt the loss as if she'd been my sweetheart--the pretty little True
Love!

"That string of shells was given to me by a shipmate--old Charlie
Sams--to bring home for his wife.  He picked 'em up on the beach above
James Town.  Took yellow Jack, he did, and died in my arms--and he only
had the shells to send to his young wife and a bit of a baby he was
always botherin' and talkin' about.  I did two cross voyages, and one
of them round the Horn, before I got home, and I couldn't find the
woman, she having moved.  So when I left the sea, I just hung them up
in case she happened to come along by chance and see them with his
portrait underneath.  That's Charlie Sams--a bit brown and faded.  She
won't come along now, I suppose.  It is a matter of fifty-five years
since Charlie died."

As he wandered round the house, so he wandered on in his reminiscences,
until Eve led him out of the front door.  He took his hat from the peg
which he had been intending to unship and refix at a lower level for
the last fifteen years, and followed her meekly into the garden.  He
paused to pick up some yellow jasmine leaves which had withered in the
warmth of the May sun and fallen on the doorstep.  Then he looked back
longingly.

"You see," said Eve cheerfully, "it is only for a few months.  We can
always let it in the summer like this, and live luxuriously on our rent
in the winter."

He threw back his shoulders and smiled bravely, trying to banish the
thought of his "bits of things."

"Yes, dearie, it's only for a few months--only for a few months."

And they both knew that they could not hope to live in Malabar Cottage
again--not, at all events, on the rent paid by the clergyman's wife.

They had taken lodgings in a small house near the harbour, which, as
Eve pointed out, was much more convenient for the shops; and, besides,
they could now buy their fish out of the boats.  This last theory she
propounded with a grave assumption of housekeeping knowledge which did
not fail to impress Captain Bontnor.

The whole town knew of the captain's misfortune, and half the citizens
of Somarsh shared in it.  Only those who had saved nothing lost
nothing, for Merton's was the only bank on the coast; and more than one
old fisherman--bent with rheumatism, crippled by the hardships of a
life spent half in the water, half on it--saw his savings--the fruit of
long toilsome years--go to pay the London tradesmen a part of what
young Merton owed them.  It was the old, oft-repeated tale of
over-education.  A country banker's son sent to public school and
university to be educated out of country banking and into nothing else.

Captain Bontnor was quite penniless.  During his long life he had saved
nearly four thousand pounds, and this sum he had placed on deposit with
the Somarsh bankers, living very comfortably on the interest.  The
whole of this was absorbed--a mere drop in the financial ocean.

Mrs. Harrington had asked Eve to accept a dress allowance of forty
pounds a year, and Eve accepted--for her uncle.  Besides this she had a
little ready money--the result of the sale of the contents of the Casa
d'Erraha.  A person who looked like a butler or a major-domo had gone
over from Barcelona to Palma to attend this sale; and the local buyers
laughed immoderately at him in their sleeves.  He was, they opined, a
mule--he did not know the value of things, and paid double for all he
bought.

But the proceeds of the sale did not amount to much.  Eve knew that
something must be done.  The money would soon be exhausted, and they
could not live on the dress allowance.  Since the failure of the bank,
Captain Bontnor's mental grasp had seemed less reliable than ever, and
Eve had kept these things to herself.

The captain's one servant--an aged female--who ruined his digestion and
neglected her dusting, was prevailed upon to return to her people, and
Eve and her uncle settled down to their restricted life in the lodgings
which were so conveniently near the fishing harbour.

The captain was too old to break off his habits of life, so he walked
his quarter-deck tramp, backwards and forwards beneath the window on
the clean pavement of the High Street, which broadened out to the
harbour.  He went down to meet the boats, where he was ever a welcome
onlooker, and he never came back without fish for which no payment had
been taken.

He usually met the postman when he was keeping his watch on
deck--beneath the little bay-window--and if there was a letter for Eve,
he would pause in front of the house, and hand it through the open sash.

He did this one morning after they had been in the lodgings a month,
and he had not added two turns to the regulation forty before Eve
called to him.  He bustled in at the door, hung his old straw hat on a
peg, which was likewise too high, and went into the little parlour.  As
he was smoking, he stood in the doorway, for he had not yet got over
his immense respect for the niece who was above him.

"Yes, dearie?" he said.  "What to do now?"

Eve was standing near the window, holding a letter in her hand.

"Listen!" she said, and spreading out her elbows she read grandly--

"'MADAM,--I like your Spanish Notes and Sketches; but I cannot put in
number one until I see number two.  Send me more, or, better still, if
convenient, when you are next in town, do me the honour of calling
here.--Yours very truly--'

"Now listen, uncle."

"Yes, dear!"

                       "'Yours very truly,
                                 "'JOHN CRAIK.'"

"Lor!" ejaculated Captain Bontnor, "the gentleman that writes."

Eve handed him the letter, which he held, awestruck, with the tip of
his thumb and finger.

"He doesn't write very well--he, he!" he added, with a chuckle. "I'm
afraid it's no good my trying to read it without my glasses."

He blinked at the crabbed spidery caligraphy, and handed the letter
back.

"It is signed John Craik, but Providence held the pen," said Eve. "If
this letter had not come I should have had to leave you, uncle. I
should have had to go and be a governess.  And I do not want to leave
you."

The old man's eyes filled suddenly, as old eyes sometimes will.  He
stuffed his pipe into his pocket and took her two hands in his, patting
them tenderly.

He did not speak for some time, but stood blinking back the tears.

"Then God bless John Craik!" he said.  "God bless him."

They sat down to talk this thing over, forgetful of the captain's pipe,
which burnt a hole in the lining of his coat.  There was so much to be
discussed.  Eve had written a certain number of short essays--painfully
conscious all the while of their simplicity and faultiness.  She did
not know that so long as a person has his subject at his finger-ends,
simplicity is rather to be commended than otherwise.  It is the
half-informed who are verbose.  She had written simply of the simple
life which she knew so well.  She had depicted Spanish daily life from
the keenly instinctive standpoint of a woman's observation; and only a
week before she had sent a single essay--marked number one--to the
editor of the Commentator, John Craik.

She had written for money, and made no disguise of her motive.  Here
was no literary lady with all the recognised adjuncts except the
literature.  She did not write in order that she might talk of having
written.  She did not talk in such flowing periods and with such
overbearing wisdom that insincere friends in sheer weariness were
called upon to suggest that she should and could write.

In sending her first small attempt to John Craik she had not forwarded
therewith a long explanatory letter, which reticence had made him read
the manuscript.

Eve read the great man's letter a second time, while the captain
scratched his head and watched her.

"And," he said meekly, "what do you think of doing?"

Eve looked up with a happy smile.

"What he tells me," she answered.  "Oh, I am so glad, uncle; I cannot
tell you how glad I am."

The captain shuffled awkwardly on his feet.

"I'm more than glad," he said.  "I'm sorter proud."

He pulled down his coat and walked to the window.

"Yes," he said, looking out into the street.  "That's it.  I'm proud.
It's a great gift--writin'.  A great gift."

Eve laughed.

"Oh!" she answered.  "I'm afraid that I have no gift.  It is a very,
very minute talent.  That is all.  I always liked books, but I have not
the gift for writing them."

Captain Bontnor never thought Eve was a great authoress.  In his simple
way this man had a vast deal of discrimination, as simple people often
have.  It is the oversubtle man who makes the most egregious mistakes,
because most of us have not time to be subtle. He never suspected Eve
of being a great authoress, and he never attributed to her any desire
to attain that doubtful pinnacle of fame.  But he saw very plainly the
immense advantage to be gathered in this time from her talent.  In his
simplicity he hoped that something would turn up for him to do, in a
world which has no pity nor charity for that which is old, effete, and
out of fashion.

"Yes," he said, after deep thought, "we must do what he tells us.
There's no harm in that."

Eve laughed.

"I thought," she said, "that we understood pride in Spain and Mallorca;
but I have never met such a proud caballero as you."

She was standing behind him where he stood, looking grimly out of the
window, her two hands resting on his broad shoulders.

"I suppose," she went on, "that you have once or twice humbled your
pride so much as to accept a ship when it was offered you.  You said
that there are plenty who would give you a command now.  John Craik is
giving me a ship, that is all."

The captain nodded.

"Yes," he said, "that's it, that's it.  You've got your first ship."



CHAPTER II.  A COMPACT.

     Prends moy tel que je suy.

The tendency of the age is to peep behind the scenes.  The world is
growing old, and human nature is nearly worn through; we are beginning
to see the bare bones of it.  But a strange survival of youthfulness is
that remarkable fascination of the unseen--the desire to get behind the
scenes and see the powder for ourselves. If a man makes his livelihood
by lifting horses and other heavy objects from the earth, we
immediately wish to know details of his private life, and an obliging
journalist interviews him.  If another write a book, we immediately
wish to know how he does it, where, when, and why.  We also like to see
his portrait on the fly-leaf--or HE likes to see it there.

Eve Challoner was lamentably behind the spirit of the age in that she
did not know how she wrote a series of articles destined to attain
renown.  But as she never went out to meet the interviewer, he never
came to her.  She fell into a habit of going out for long walks by
herself, and in the course of these peregrinations she naturally
acquired the custom of thinking about her writing.

During these long walks Captain Bontnor remained at home alone, or
joined a knot of fellow-mariners on the green in front of the
reading-room.  When Eve came home with her mind full of matter to be
set down on paper he discreetly went to keep his watch on
deck--backwards and forwards on the pavement in front of the window.
At each turn the old sailor paused to cast his eyes over the whole
horizon, after the manner of mariners, as if he were steering Somarsh
across the North Sea.

Thus uncle and niece glided imperceptibly into that mode of life which
is called humdrum, and which some wise people consider the best mode of
getting through existence.  Sketch number two was written, rewritten,
liked, hated, and finally sent to John Craik, with a letter explaining
that the writer lived in Suffolk, and could not for the moment make it
convenient to go to London.  John Craik was a busy man.  He made no
answer, and in a few days the proof of sketch number one arrived, with
a little printed notice of instructions as to correcting and returning.
Of all fleeting glamours that of the proof-sheet is assuredly lightest
on the wing, and Eve duly hated her own works in print, as we all do
hate our first triumphs.  Afterwards we get resigned--much as we grow
resigned to the face we see in the looking-glass.

At this time Captain Bontnor conceived the idea that it was incumbent
upon him to take up seriously, though late in life, the higher walks of
literature.

"Now," he said to Eve one evening, when the first proof had been almost
wept over, "now, dearie, what author would you recommend to a man who
has a natural likin' for reading, but owing to the circumstances of his
life has had no opportunity of cultivatin' his taste?"

"Well, uncle, a good deal would depend upon his inclination--whether he
liked poetry or fiction, or serious reading."

"Of course, of course," acceded Captain Bontnor, pressing the tobacco
into his pipe with his thumb; "I am taking that into consideration.
There's all sorts to be had now, ain't there--poetry and fiction and
novels?  I am not sure that the style would matter much, so long--so
long as the print was nice and clear."

Eve duly gave her opinion without pressing the question too closely,
and while she was out on her long walks Captain Bontnor laboriously
cultivated his neglected taste.  He sat in the window-seat with much
gravity, and more than made up in application for the youthful
quickness which he lacked.  He resolutely refused to look up from his
book when he heard the alternate thud and stump which announced the
passage down to the harbour of his particular crony, Mark Standon,
whose other leg had been buried at sea.  He kept the dictionary beside
him, and when the writer used a word of sonorous ring and obscure
meaning he gravely looked it out.

The first time that Mr. Standon saw his friend thus engaged he stood on
the pavement and expressed his surprise with more force than elegance;
whereupon Captain Bontnor went out and explained to him exactly how it
stood.  So marked was the old sailor's influence on the social affairs
at Somarsh that there was a notable revival of literary taste and
discussion at the corner of the Lifeboat House, where the local
intellect assembled.

Captain Bontnor was engaged one day in the study of an author called
Dickens, to whose works he had not yet found time to devote his full
attention, when a strange footstep on the pavement made him look up. It
certainly was not Standon's halting gait, and a lack of iron nail
certified to the fact that it was no Somarsh man.  The captain looked
over his spectacles and saw Cipriani de Lloseta studying the numbers on
the doors as he came down the quiet little street.

The sight gave the old sailor rather a shock.  He abandoned the study
of Mr. Dickens and took off his spectacles.  Then he scratched his
head--always an ominous sign.  His first instinct was to go and open
the door; then he remembered that the new-comer was a nobleman who
lived in a palace, and that he himself was indirectly a gentleman,
inasmuch as he lived in the same house as a lady--his niece.  So he sat
still and allowed the landlady to open the door.

When Cipriani de Lloseta was ushered into the tiny room he found the
captain half-bowing on the hearthrug.

"Captain Bontnor," he said, with all the charm of manner which was his,
"this is a pleasure."

The captain shook hands, and with the rough hospitality of the cabin
drew forward his own armchair, which the Count took at once.

"When last we met," he said, "I had the privilege of receiving you at
my house in Barcelona--a poor dark place in a narrow street.  Now here
you have a sea-view."

"But this is not my house," said Captain Bontnor, feeling unaccountably
at ease with this nobleman.  "Malabar Cottage is farther up the hill.
I've got all my bits of things up there."

"Indeed.  It would have given me pleasure to see them.  I learnt from a
mutual--friend, Mrs. Harrington, of your change of address."

Captain Bontnor looked at him keenly; and who shall say that the rough
old man did not appreciate the refined tact of his visitor?

"I've had losses," he said.

The Count nodded shortly.  He was drawing off his gloves.

"I do not know," he said conversationally, "if it has been your
experience, but for myself I have found that reverses of fortune are
not without some small consolation.  They prove the friendship of one's
friends."

The captain reflected.

"Yes," he said, "you're right, Mr.--I mean Count--and--and brings the
good out of women."

"Women!" the Count repeated gravely.  "You refer to Miss Challoner--I
see signs of her presence in this room.  Is she out?"

"Yes--I am afraid she is."  He glanced nervously at the clock.  "She is
not likely to be in for an hour and more yet."

"I am sorry," said the Count; "but also I am rather glad.  I shall thus
have an opportunity of asking your opinion upon one or two
matters--between men of the world, you know."

"I am afraid my opinion is not of much value, sir, except it's about
schooners--I always sailed in schooners."

The Count nodded gravely.

"In my country," he said, "we usually go in for brigs; they find them
easier to handle.  But you know Mallorca--you have seen for yourself."

The captain was not listening; he was looking at the modest
lodging-house sideboard.

"I was wondering," he explained, with a transparent simplicity which
was perhaps as good as that which is called good breeding, "whether you
would take a glass of sherry wine."

"I should like nothing better," said the Count.  "It will give me
pleasure to take a glass of wine with you."

Quietly, imperceptibly, De Lloseta set Captain Bontnor at his ease, and
at the same time he mastered him.  They spoke of indifferent
topics--topics which, however, were well within the captain's knowledge
of the world.  Then suddenly the Count laid aside the social mask which
he wore with such consummate ease.

"I came down to Somarsh," he said, "because I am deeply distressed at
your reverse of fortune.  I came to see you, captain, because when I
had the pleasure of meeting you at Barcelona I saw you to be a just
man, and one to whom one could speak openly.  I am a rich man--you
understand.  Need I say more?"

Captain Bontnor blinked uncertainly.

"No," he answered, "I'm thinkin' it isn't necessary."

"Not between men of the world," urged Cipriani de Lloseta.  "It is not
for your sake.  I would not insult you in such a way.  It is for Eve.
For a woman's sake a man may easily sacrifice his pride."

The captain nodded and glanced at the clock.  He had not fully realised
until that moment how dependent he was upon his niece.

"You know," continued the Count, following up his advantage, "all the
somewhat peculiar circumstances of the case.  Do you think there is any
chance of Eve's reconsidering her decision?"

The captain shook his head.

"No," he answered bluntly, "I don't.  Since she came back from
London--" he paused.

"Yes, since she came back from London?" suggested the Count.

"She seems more determined than ever."

The Count was looking at him keenly.

"Then," he said, "you also have noticed a change."

Captain Bontnor shuffled in his seat and likewise in his speech.

"I suppose," he said, "that she has grown into a woman.  Adversity's
done it."

"Yes," said the Count, "your observations seem to me to be correct. I
had the pleasure of seeing her once or twice when she was staying at
Mrs. Harrington's; but I did not refer to the question raised at my
house in Barcelona, because I noticed the change to which you allude.
Instead, I attempted to gain the co-operation and assistance of a
mutual friend, Henry FitzHenry."

Cipriani de Lloseta paused and looked at his companion, who in turn
gazed stolidly at the fire.

"And I received a rebuff," added the Count.  He waited for some little
time, but Captain Bontnor had no comment to offer, so De Lloseta went
on:  "Challoner was one of my best friends.  I do not feel disposed to
let the matter drop, more especially now that you have been compelled
to leave Malabar Cottage.  I propose entreating Miss Challoner to
reconsider her decision.  Will you help me?"

"Yes," answered Captain Bontnor, "I will."

"Then tell me if Eve has accepted assistance from Mrs. Harrington?"

"Yes, she has."

The Count swore softly in Spanish.

"I am sorry for that," he said aloud.  "I am superstitious.  I have a
theory that Mrs. Harrington's money is apt to be a curse to those upon
whom it is bestowed."

"Mrs. Harrington's no friend of mine," said Captain Bontnor; and De
Lloseta, who was looking out of the window, smiled somewhat grimly.

"Perhaps," he said after a little pause, "perhaps you will allow me to
claim the privilege which you deny to her?"

"Yes," answered Captain Bontnor awkwardly; "yes, if you care to."

"Thanks.  I see Miss Challoner--Eve--coming.  I count on your
assistance."

Eve paused on the threshold in astonishment at the sight of the Count
de Lloseta and her uncle in grave discourse over a glass of sherry.

"You!" she said.  "You here!"

And he wondered why she suddenly lost colour.

"I," he answered, "I--here to pay my respects."

Eve gave a little gasp of relief.  For a moment she was off her
guard--with a dangerous man watching her.

"I thought you had bad news," she said.

And Cipriani de Lloseta knew that this was a woman whose heart was at
sea.

"No," he answered; "I merely came to quarrel."

He drew forward a chair, and Eve sat down.

"We shall always quarrel," he went on, "unless you are kind.  Let us
begin at once and get it over, because I want to stay to lunch. Will
you reconsider your decision with respect to the Val d'Erraha?"

Eve shook her head and looked at her uncle.

"No," she answered; "I cannot do that.  Not now."

"Some day?" he suggested.

"Not now," repeated the girl; and, looking up, her face suddenly became
grave, as if reflecting the expression in the dark Spanish eyes bent
upon her.

"You are cruel!" he said.

"I am young--"

"Is it not the same thing?"

"And I can work," added Eve.

"Yes," he said.  "But in my old-fashioned way I am prejudiced against a
lady working.  In the days of women's rights ladies are apt to forget
the charm of white hands."

Eve made no answer.

"Then it is not peace?"

"No," she answered, with a smile; "not yet."

She was standing beside Captain Bontnor, with her hand on his shoulder.

"Uncle and I," she added, "are not beaten yet."

Cipriani de Lloseta smiled darkly.

"Will you promise me one thing," he said; "that when you are beaten you
will come to me before you go to any one else?"

"Yes," answered Eve, "I think we can promise that."



CHAPTER III.  BAFFLED.

     He conquers who awaits the end.

Fortune fixed her wayward fancy on the first sketch that Eve
contributed to the Commentator.  Wayward, indeed, for Eve herself knew
that it was not good, and in the lettered quiet of the editorial
sanctum John Craik smiled querulously to himself.  John Craik had a
supreme contempt for the public taste, but he knew exactly what it
wanted.  He was like a chef smiling over his made dishes.  He did not
care for the flavour himself, but his palate was subtle enough to
detect the sweet or bitter that tickled his master's tongue.  He served
the public faithfully, with a twisted, cynic smile behind his
spectacles--for John Craik had a family to feed.  He knew that Eve's
work was only partially good--true woman's work that might cease to
flow at any moment.  But he detected the undeniable originality of it,
and the public palate likes a novel flavour.

So deeply versed was he in worldly knowledge, so thoroughly had he
gauged the critic, the journalist, and the public, that before he
unfolded a newspaper he could usually foresee the length, the nature,
and the literary merit of the criticism.  He knew that the tendency of
the age is to acquire as much knowledge as possible in a short time.
He looked upon the world as a huge kindergarten, and the Commentator as
its school-book.  It was good that the world's knowledge of its own
geography should be extended, but the world must not be allowed to
detect the authority of the usher's voice. There are a lot of people
who, like women at a remnant sale, go about the paths of literature
picking up scraps which do not match, and never can be of the slightest
use.  It was John Craik's business to set out his remnant counter to
catch these wandering gleaners, and Eve sent him her wares by a lucky
chance at the moment when he wanted them.

The editor of the Commentator was sitting in his deep chair before the
fire one morning about eleven o'clock, when the clerk, whose business
it was to tell glib lies about his chief, brought him a card.

"Lloseta," said Craik aloud to himself.  "Ask him to come up."

"The man who ought to have written the Spanish sketches," he commented,
when the clerk had left.

The Count came into the room with a certain ease of manner subtly
indicative of the fact that it was not the first time that he had
visited it.  He shook hands and waited until the clerk had closed the
door.

There was a copy of the month's Commentator on the table.  De Lloseta
took it up and opened it at the first page.

"Who wrote that?" he asked, holding out the magazine.

Craik laughed--a sudden boyish laugh--but he held his sides the while.

"You not only beard the lion in his den, but you ask him to tell you
the tricks of his trade," he said.  "Sit down, all the same.  You don't
mind my pipe, do you?"

The Spaniard sat down and sought a cigarette-case in his waistcoat
pocket with a deliberation that made his companion fidget in his chair.

"You asked me to write those sketches," said the Count pleasantly. "I
delayed and you gave the order to some one else.  Assuredly I have a
certain right to ask who my supplanter is."

"None whatever, my dear Lloseta.  I did not give the order for those
sketches--they came."

"From whom?"

"Ah!"

"You will not tell me?"

"My dear man, I cannot.  The smell of printing ink is not good for a
man's morals.  Leave me my unsullied honour."

The Count had lighted his cigarette.  He looked keenly at his
companion's deeply-lined face, and the blue smoke floated between them.

"There are not many people who could have written that article," he
said.  "For the few English who know Spain like that are known to the
natives.  And no Spaniard would have dared to write it."

John Craik laughed, and while he was laughing his eyes were grave and
full of keen observation.

"Then you admit that it is true," he said.

"Yes," answered the Count; "it is true--all of it.  The writer knows my
country as few Englishmen--or WOMEN know it."

John Craik was leaning back in his deep chair an emaciated,
pain-stricken form.  His calm grey eyes met the quick glance, and did
not fall nor waver.

"Then you will not tell me?"

"No.  But why are you so anxious to know?"

The Count smoked for a few seconds in silence.

"I will tell you," he said suddenly, "in confidence."

Craik nodded, and settled himself again in his chair.  He was a very
fidgety man.

"It is not the first article that I care about," explained De Lloseta.
"It is that which is behind it.  This"--he laid his hand on the
page--"is my own country, the north and east of Spain, the wildest part
of the Peninsula, the home of the Catalonians, who have always been the
leaders in strife and warfare.  It is the country from whence my family
has its source.  All that is written about Catalonia or the Baleares
must necessarily refer in part to me and mine.  This writer may know
too much."

"I think," said John Craik, "that I can guarantee that if the writer
does know too much, the Commentator shall not be the channel through
which the knowledge will reach the public."

"Thanks; but--can you guarantee it?  Can you guarantee that the public
interest, being aroused by these articles, may not ask for further
details, which details might easily be given elsewhere, in something
less--respectable--than the Commentator?"

"My dear sir, one would think you had a crime on your conscience."

Cipriani de Lloseta smiled--such a smile as John Craik had never seen
before.

"I have many," he answered.  "Who has not?"

"Yes; they accumulate as life goes on, do they not?"

"What I fear," went on De Lloseta, "is the idle gossip which obtains in
England under the pleasant title of 'Society Notes,' 'Boudoir Chat,'
and other new-fangled vulgarities.  In Spain we have not that."

"Then Spain is the Promised Land."

"Your Society journalists may talk of the English nobility, though the
aristocracy that fills the 'Society Notes' is almost invariably the
aristocracy of yesterday.  But I want to keep the Spanish families out
of it if possible--the names that were there before printing was
invented."

"Printing and education are too cheap nowadays," said John Craik. "They
are both dangerous instruments in the hands of fools, and it is the
fool who goes to the cheap market.  But you need not be afraid of the
Society papers.  It is only those who wish to be advertised who find
themselves there."

De Lloseta's thoughts had gone back to the Commentator.  He picked up
the magazine and was looking over the pages of the Spanish article.

"It is clever," he said.  "It is very clever."

Craik nodded, after the manner of one who had formed his own opinion
and intended to abide by it.  He was a gentle-mannered man in the
ordinary intercourse of life, but on the battlefield of letters he was
a veritable Coeur-de-Lion.  He quailed before no man.

"You know," said the Count, "there are only two persons who could have
written this--and they are women.  If it is the one, I fear nothing; if
the other, I fear everything."

"Then," said John Craik, shuffling in his chair, "fear nothing."

De Lloseta looked at him sharply.

"I could force you to tell a lie by mentioning the name of the woman
who wrote this," he said.

"Then don't!" said John Craik.  "I lie beautifully!"

"No, I will not.  But I will ask you to do something for me instead:
let me read the proofs of these as they are printed."

For exactly two seconds John Craik pondered.

"I shall be happy to do that," he said.  "I will let you know when the
proof is ready.  You must come here and read it in this room."

Cipriani de Lloseta rose from his seat.

"Thank you," he said, holding out his hand.  "I will not keep you from
your work.  You are doing a better action than you are aware of."

He took the frail fingers in his grasp for a second and turned to go.
Before the door closed behind him John Craik was at work again.

So Eve Challoner's work passed through Cipriani de Lloseta's hand, and
that nobleman came into her life from another point.  It would seem
that in whichsoever direction she turned, the Mallorcan was waiting for
her with his grave persistence, his kindly determination to watch over
her, to exercise that manly control over her life which is really the
chief factor of feminine happiness on earth--if women only knew it.
For all through Nature there are qualities given to the male for the
sole advantage of the female, and the beasts of the forest rise up in
silent protest against the nonsense that is talked to-day of woman's
place in the world.  We may consider the beasts of the field to
advantage, for through all the chances and changes of education, of
female emancipation, and the subjection of the weaker sort of man,
there will continue to run to the end of time the one grand principle
that the male is there to protect the female and the female to care for
her young.

Cipriani de Lloseta thus late in life seemed to have found an object.
Eve Challoner, while bringing back the past with a flood of
recollections--for she seemed to carry the air of Mallorca with
her--had so far brought him to the present that for the first time
since thirty years and more he began to be interested in the life that
was around him.

He suspected--nay, he almost knew--that Eve had written the article in
the Commentator which had attracted so much attention.  John Craik had
to a certain extent baffled him.  He had called on the editor of the
great periodical in the hope of gleaning some detail--some little scrap
of information which would confirm his suspicion--but he had come away
with nothing of value excepting the promise that the printed matter
should pass through his hands before it reached the public.

Even if he was mistaken, and this proved after all to be the work of
Mrs. Harrington, the fact of the proof being offered to his scrutiny
was in itself an important safeguard.  This, however, was only a
secondary possibility.  He knew that Eve had written this thing, and he
wished to have the opportunity of correcting one or two small mistakes
which he anticipated, and which he felt that he himself alone could
rectify.

In the meantime John Craik was scribbling a letter to Eve in his minute
caligraphy.

"DEAR MADAM" (he wrote), "Your first article is, I am glad to say,
attracting considerable attention.  It is absolutely necessary that I
should see you, with a view of laying down plans for further
contributions.  Please let me know how this can be arranged.  Yours
truly,
                                        "JOHN CRAIK."

And at the same time another man, to whom all these things were of
paramount importance--to whom all that touched Eve's life was as if it
touched his own--was reading the Commentator.  Fitz, on his way home
from the Mediterranean, to fill the post of navigating-lieutenant to a
new ironclad at that time fitting out at Chatham, bought the
Commentator from an enterprising newsagent given to maritime venture in
Plymouth harbour.  The big steamer only stayed long enough to discharge
her mails, and Fitz being a sailor did not go ashore.  Instead, he sat
on a long chair on deck and read the Commentator.  He naturally
concluded that at last Cipriani de Lloseta had acceded to John Craik's
wish.

The Ingham-Bakers had come home from Malta and were at this time
staying with Mrs. Harrington in London.  Agatha had of late taken to
reading the newspapers somewhat exhaustively.  She read such columns as
are usually passed over by the majority of womankind--such as naval
intelligence and those uninteresting details of maritime affairs
printed in small type, and stated to emanate from Lloyd's, wherever
that vague source may be.

From these neglected corners of the Morning Post Agatha Ingham-Baker
had duly learnt that Henry FitzHenry had been appointed
navigating-lieutenant to the Terrific, lying at Chatham, which would
necessitate his leaving the Kittiwake at Gibraltar and returning to
England at once.  She also read that the Indian liner Croonah had
sailed from Malta for Gibraltar and London, with two hundred and five
passengers and twenty-six thousand pounds in specie.

And John Craik had written to Eve to come to London, where she had a
permanent invitation to stay with Mrs. Harrington.

From over the wide world these people seemed to be drifting together
like leaves upon a pond--borne hither and thither by some unseen
current, swirled suddenly by a passing breath--at the mercy of wind and
weather and chance, each occupied in his or her small daily life,
looking no further ahead than the next day or the next week. And yet
they were drifting surely and steadily towards each other, driven by
the undercurrent of Fate, against which the strongest will may beat
itself in vain.



CHAPTER IV.  FOR THE HIGHEST BIDDER.

     Let thine eyes look right on.

"How handsome Fitz looks in his uniform!" Mrs. Ingham-Baker said, with
that touch of nervous apprehension which usually affected all original
remarks addressed by her to Mrs. Harrington.

Mrs. Ingham-Baker had been to Malta and back, but the wonders of the
deep had failed to make a wiser woman of her.  If one wishes to gain
anything by seeing the world, it is best to go and look at it early in
life.

"Yes," answered Mrs. Harrington, with a glance in the direction of
Agatha, the only other occupant of the drawing-room--"yes; he is a
good-looking young fellow."

Agatha was reading the Globe, sitting upright and stiff, for she was
wearing a new ball-dress.

"I think," went on Mrs. Ingham-Baker volubly, "that I have never seen a
naval uniform before--in a room close at hand, you know.  Of course, on
board the Croonah the officers wore a sort of uniform, but they had not
a sword."

Agatha turned over her newspaper impatiently.  Mrs. Harrington was
listening with an air of the keenest interest, which might have been
sarcastic.

"Poor Luke had not quite so much gold braid--"

Agatha looked up, and Mrs. Ingham-Baker collapsed.

"I should think," she added, after some nervous shufflings in her seat,
"that a sword is a great nuisance.  Should you not think so, Marion
dear?"

"I do not know," replied Mrs. Harrington; "I never wore one."

Mrs. Ingham-Baker laughed eagerly at herself, after the manner of
persons who cannot afford to keep up a decent self-respect.

"But I always rather think," she went on, with an apprehensive glance
towards her daughter, "that a sword is out of place in a drawing-room,
or--or anywhere where there are carpets, you know."

"I thought you had never seen one before," put in Agatha, without
looking up from her newspaper.  "In a room--close at hand, you know."

"No--no, of course not; but I knew, dear, that they were worn.  Of
course, in warfare it is different."

"In warfare," said Mrs. Harrington patiently, "they are usually
supposed to come in rather handy."

"Yes--he-he!" acquiesced Mrs. Ingham-Baker, adjusting a bracelet on her
arm with something approaching complacency.  She thought she began to
see daylight through the conversational maze in which--with the best
intentions--she had involved herself.  "But I was only thinking that
for a lady's drawing-room I think I like Luke's quiet black clothes
just as much."

"I am glad of that," said Mrs. Harrington; "because I expect you will
see several other men in the same dress this evening."

Mrs. Harrington had got up a party to go to the great naval ball of the
season--a charity ball.  Her party consisted of the Ingham-Bakers and
the FitzHenrys, and for the first time for eight years the twin
brothers met in the house in Grosvenor Gardens.  They were at this
moment in the dining-room together, where they had been left by their
hostess with a kindly injunction to finish the port wine, duly
tempered--as was all Mrs. Harrington's kindness--by instructions not to
smoke.

Agatha's feelings were rather mixed, so, like a wise young woman of the
world, she read the evening paper with great assiduity and refused to
think.

The evening had been one of comparisons.  Fitz and Luke had come
together, for they were sharing rooms in Jermyn Street.  Fitz, smart,
upright, essentially a naval officer and an unquestionable gentleman.
Luke, a trifle browner, more weather-beaten, with a faint, subtle
suggestion of a rougher life.  Fitz, easy, good-natured, calmly sure of
himself--utterly without self-consciousness. Luke, conscious of
inferior grade, not quite at ease, jealously on the alert for the
comparison.

And Agatha had known from the first moment that in the eyes of the
world--and Mrs. Harrington looked through those eyes--there was no
comparison.  Fitz carried all before him.  All except Agatha.  The girl
was puzzled.  Luke could not be compared with Fitz, and the whole world
did not compare with Luke.  She was fully awake to the contradiction,
and she could not reconcile her facts.  She had been very properly
brought up at the Brighton Boarding School, receiving a good,
practical, modern, nineteenth-century education--a curriculum of solid
facts culled from the latest school books, from which Love had very
properly been omitted.

And now, as she pretended to read the Globe Agatha was puzzling vaguely
and numbly over the contradictions that come into human existence with
the small adjunct called love.  She was wondering how it was that she
saw Luke's faults and the thousand ways in which he was inferior to his
brother, and yet that with all these to stay him up Fitz did not
compare with Luke.  After all, there must have been some small defect
in the education which she had received, for instead of thinking these
futile things she ought to have been attempting to discover--as was her
mother at that moment--which of the two brothers seemed more likely to
inherit Mrs. Harrington's money.

Agatha's thoughts went back to the moment on the deck of the Croonah,
when the sea breeze swept over her and Luke, and the strength of it,
the simple, open force, seemed to be part and parcel of him--of the
strong arms around her in which she was content to lie quiescent.  She
wondered for a moment whether it had all been true.

For Agatha Ingham-Baker was essentially human and womanly, in that she
was, and ever would be, a creature of possibilities.  She took up her
long gloves and began slowly to draw them on.  They were quite new, and
she smoothed them with a distinct satisfaction, under which there
brooded the sense of a new possibility.  In all her calculations of
life--and these had been many--she had never thought of the possibility
of misery.  She buttoned the gloves, she drew them cunningly up over
her rounded arms, and she wondered whether she was going to be a
miserable woman all her life.  She saw herself suddenly with those
inward eyes which are sometimes vouchsafed to us momentarily, and she
saw Misery--in its best dress.

She looked up as Fitz and Luke came into the room.  Luke's eyes were
only for her.  Fitz, with the unconcealed absorption which was often
his, absolutely ignored her presence.  And the little incident roused
something contradictory in Agatha--something evil and, alas! feminine.
She awoke to the very matter-of-factness of the present moment, and she
determined to make a conquest of Fitz.

Agatha was not quite on her guard, and Mrs. Harrington's cold grey eyes
were alert.  It had once been this lady's intention to use Agatha as a
means of subjecting Luke to her own capricious will--Agatha being the
alternative means where money had failed.  She had almost forgotten
this when Luke came into the room with eyes only for Agatha--and the
girl was looking at Fitz.

"I suppose, Agatha," said Mrs. Harrington, "you will not be at a loss
for partners to-night?  You will know plenty of dancing men?"

"Oh, I suppose so," replied Agatha indifferently.  She turned over her
newspaper and retreated, as it were, behind her first line of
defence--the sure line of audacious silence.

"The usual throng?"

"The usual throng," answered Agatha imperturbably.

Luke was biting his nails impatiently.  His jealousy was patent to any
woman.  Fitz was talking to Mrs. Ingham-Baker.

"I should advise you young men to secure your dances now," continued
Mrs. Harrington, with her usual fatal persistence.  "Once Agatha gets
into the room she will be snapped up."

Fitz turned round with his good-natured smile--the smile that indicates
a polite attention to an indifferent conversation--and Mrs.
Ingham-Baker was free to thrust in her awkward oar.  She splashed in.

"Oh, I am sure she will not let herself be snapped up to-night; will
you, dear?"

"That, no doubt, depends upon the snapper," put in Mrs. Harrington,
looking--perhaps by accident--at Fitz.  "Fitz," she went on, "come here
and tell me all about your new ship.  I hope you are proud--I am.  I am
often laughed at for a garrulous old woman when I begin talking of you!"

She glanced aside at Mrs. Ingham-Baker, who was beaming on Fitz, as the
simple-hearted beam on the rising sun.

"Yes," said the stout lady, "we are all so delighted.  Agatha was only
saying yesterday that your success was wonderful.  She was quite
excited about it."

The fond mother looked invitingly towards her daughter with a smile
that said as plainly as words--

"There you are!  I have cleared the stage for you--step in and score a
point."

But Agatha did not respond.

"I suppose it is a steamer," continued Mrs. Ingham-Baker eagerly. "A
steam man-of-war."

"Yes," replied Fitz, with perfect gravity, "a steam man-of-war."

"The Horrible--or the Terrible, is it not?"

"The Terrific."

There was an account of the new war-ship in the evening paper which
Agatha had laid aside, and Fitz was impolitely glancing at this while
he spoke.  The journal gave the names of the officers.  Fitz was
wondering whether Eve Challoner ever saw the Globe.

Mrs. Ingham-Baker became lost in a maternal fit of admiration.  She was
looking at Agatha with her head on one side.  At intervals she glanced
towards Fitz--an inviting glance, as if to draw his attention to the
fact that one of Nature's most perfect productions was waiting to
gladden his vision.

"Look!" that little glance seemed to say.  "Look at Agatha.  IS she not
lovely?"

But Fitz was still wondering whether Eve was in the habit of reading
the Globe.  He often wondered thus about her daily habits, trying to
picture, in his ignorant masculine way, the hours and minutes of a
girl's daily existence.

Mrs. Ingham-Baker could not stand this waste of his time and Agatha's
dress.

"What do you think of the frock?" she asked Mrs. Harrington, in a
whisper which was audible to every one in the room.

"It is very pretty," replied the hostess, who happened to be in a good
humour.  Dress possessed a small corner of her cold heart.  It was one
of very few weaknesses.  It was almost a redeeming point in a too
man-like character.  Her own dresses were always perfect, usually of
the richest silk--and grey.  Hence she was known as the Grey Lady, and
only a few--for Society has neither time nor capacity for
thought--wondered whether the colour had penetrated to her soul.

The two now became engaged in a technical conversation, which was only
interrupted by the arrival of tea.  Luke and Agatha were talking about
Malta.  She was telling him that their friends in Valetta had invited
them to go again next year, and the Croonah was mentioned.

While the hostess was attending to the teapot, Mrs. Ingham-Baker took
the opportunity of disturbing Fitz--of stirring him up, so to speak,
and making him look at Agatha.

"Do you think you would have recognised your old playmate if you had
met her accidentally--to-night, for instance, at the ball?" she asked.

Again the inviting glance toward her daughter, to which Fitz naturally
responded.  It was too obvious to ignore.

"No; I do not think so," he replied, going back in his mind to the
recollection of a thin-legged little girl with lank hair.

Mrs. Ingham-Baker's proud eyes rested complacently on her offspring.

"Do you like her dress?" she asked in a whisper--only audible to him.
But Agatha knew the gist of it.  The arm and shoulder nearest to them
gave a little jerk of self-consciousness.

"Very pretty," replied Fitz; and Mrs. Ingham-Baker stored the remark
away for future use.  For all she knew--or all she wanted to know--it
might refer to Agatha's self.

"I am afraid I shall lose her, you know--horribly afraid," whispered
Mrs. Ingham-Baker, knowing the value of competition in all things.

Fitz looked genuinely sympathetic, and glanced at Agatha again,
wondering what disease had marked her for its own.  Mrs. Ingham-Baker
thought fit to explain indirectly, as was her wont.

"She is very much admired," she said under her breath, with a sigh and
a lugubrious shake of the head.

"Oh," murmured Fitz, with a smile.

"Yes," answered Mrs. Ingham-Baker.  She heaved a sigh, observed a
decent pause, and then added, "Does it surprise you?"

"Not in the least.  It is most natural."

"You think so--really?"

"Of course I do," answered Fitz.

There was another little pause, and Mrs. Ingham-Baker then said, in a
tone of friendly confidence--

"I advise you to secure your dances early.  She will be engaged three
deep in a very short time--a lot of mere boys she does not want to
dance with."

Fitz thanked her fervently, and went to help Mrs. Harrington.

Mrs. Ingham-Baker sat back in her chair, well pleased with herself.
Like many of her kind, she began the social campaign with the initial
error of underrating her natural foes--young men.



CHAPTER V.  THE TEAR ON THE SWORD.

     But over all things brooding slept
     The quiet sense of something lost.

Agatha was singularly uncertain of herself.  If it had not been for her
education--at the Brighton school they had taught her that tears are
not only idle, but also harmful to the complexion--she would have felt
inclined to weep.

There was something wrong about the world this evening, and she did not
know what it was.  Little things irritated her--such as the creak of
Mrs. Harrington's rich silk dress as that lady breathed. Agatha almost
hated Fitz, without knowing why.  She wanted Luke to come and speak to
her, and yet the necessity of limiting their conversation to mere
social platitudes made her hope that he would not do so.

At length she rose to go and make her last preparations for the ball.
The old habit was so strong upon her that unconsciously she gave a
little swing of the hips to throw her skirt out--to show herself to the
greatest advantage in the perfect dress.  There was a tiny suggestion
of the thoroughbred horse in the paddock--as there always is in the
attitude of some young persons, though they would not be grateful were
one to tell them of it--a certain bridling, a sleek step, and a
lamentably obvious search for the eye of admiration.  Fitz opened the
door for her, and she gave him a glance as she passed him--a
preliminary shot to find the range, as it were--to note which way the
wind blew.

In the dimly-lighted hall Agatha suddenly became aware of a hot
sensation in the eyelids.  The temperature of the tear of vexation is a
high one.  As she passed towards the staircase, her glance was
attracted by a sword, bright of hilt, dark of sheath.  Fitz's sword,
lying with his white gloves on the table, where he had laid them on
coming into the house.  The footman had drawn the blade an inch or so
from the sheath--to look at the chasing--to handle the steel that deals
in warfare with all the curiosity of one whose business lies among the
knives of peace.

Agatha paused and looked at the tokens of Fitz's calling.  She thought
of Luke, who had no sword.  And the hot unwonted tear fell on the blade.

All the evening Mrs. Harrington had been marked in her attention to
Fitz.  It was quite obvious that he was--for the moment, at all
events--the favoured nephew.  And Mrs. Ingham-Baker noted these things.

"My dear," she whispered to Agatha, when they were waiting in the hall
for their hostess, "it is Fitz, of course.  I can see that with half an
eye."

Agatha shrugged her shoulders in a rude manner, suggesting almost that
her mother was deprived of more reliable means of observation than the
moiety mentioned.

"What is Fitz?" she asked, with weary patience.

"Well, I can only tell you that she has called him 'dear' twice this
evening, and I have never heard her do the same to Luke."

"A lot Luke cares!" muttered Agatha scornfully, and her mother, whose
sense of logic did not run to the perception that Luke's feelings were
beside the question, discreetly collapsed into her voluminous wraps.

She was, however, quite accustomed to be treated thus with contumely,
and then later to see her suggestions acted upon--a feminine
consolation which men would do well to take unto themselves.  As soon
as they entered the ball-room, Mrs. Ingham-Baker, with that
supernatural perspicacity which is sometimes found in stupid mothers,
saw that Agatha was refusing her usual partners. She noted her
daughter's tactics with mingled awe and admiration, both of which
tributes were certainly deserved.  She saw Agatha look straight through
one man at the decorations on the wall behind; she saw her greet an
amorous youth of tender years with a semi-maternal air of protection
which at once blighted his hopes, cured his passion, and made him
abandon the craving for a dance.  Agatha was evidently reserving
herself and her programme for some special purposes, and she did it
with a skill bred of long experience.

Luke was the first to come and ask for a dance--nay, he demanded it.

"Do you remember the last time we danced together?" he asked, as he
wrote on her card.

"Yes," she replied, in a voice which committed her to nothing.  She did
not look at him, but past him; to where Fitz was talking to Mrs.
Harrington.

But he was not content with that.  He retained the card and stood in
front of her, waiting with suppressed passion in every muscle, waiting
for her to meet his eyes.

At last, almost against her will, she did, and for one brief moment she
was supremely happy.  It was only, however, for a moment.  Sent,
apparently, by a very practical Providence to save her from herself, a
young man blustered good-naturedly through the crowd and planted
himself before her with a cheery aplomb which seemed to indicate his
supposition that in bringing her his presence he brought the desire of
her heart and the brightest moment of the evening.

"Well, Agatha," he said, in that loud voice which, with all due
deference, usually marks the Harrovian, "how many have you got for me?
No rot now!  I want my share, you know, eh?"

Heedless of Luke's scowling presence, he held out his hand, encased in
a very tight glove, asking with a good-natured jerk of the head for her
programme.

"Is your wife here?" asked Agatha, smilingly relinquishing her card.

"Wife be blowed!" he answered heartily.  "Why so formal?  Of course
she's here, carrying on with all the young 'uns as usual.  She's as fit
as paint.  But she won't like to be called stiff names.  Why don't you
call her Maggie?"

Agatha smiled and did not explain.  She doubtless had a good reason for
the unusually formal inquiry, and she glanced at Luke to see that his
brow had cleared.

Then suddenly some instinct, coming she knew not whence, and leading to
consequences affecting their three lives, made her introduce the two
men.

"Mr. Carr," she said, "Mr. FitzHenry.  You may be able to get each
other partners.  Besides, you have an interest in common."

The two men bowed.

"Are you a sailor?" inquired Luke, almost pleasantly.  With Willie Carr
it was difficult to be stiff and formal.

"Not I; but I'm interested in shipping--not the navy, you
know--merchant service.  I'm something in the City, like the young man
on the omnibus, eh?"

"I'm in the merchant service," answered Luke.

"Ah!  What ship?"

"The Croonah."

"Croonah," repeated Carr, hastily scribbling his name on Agatha's
programme.  "Fine ship; I know her well by name.  Know 'em all on
paper, you know.  I'm an insurance man--what they call a
doctor--Lloyd's and all that; missing ships, overdue steamers, hedging
and dodging, and the inner walks of marine insurance--that's yours
truly.  Croonah's a big value, _I_ know."

He looked up keenly over Agatha's engagement card.  The look was not
quite in keeping with his bluff and open manners.  Moreover, a man who
is, so to speak, not in keeping with himself is one who requires
watching.

"Yes, she is a fine ship," answered Luke, with a momentary thought of
the Terrific.

"Tell me," went on Carr, confidentially plucking Luke's sleeve, "when
she is going to the bottom, and I'll do a line for you--make your
fortune for you.  You'd not be the first man who has come to me, with
his hair hardly dry, for a cheque."

Luke laughed and went away in answer to Mrs. Harrington's beckoning
finger.

Fitz was coming towards Agatha and her companion.

"Holloa!" exclaimed Carr, "I'm blowed if here is not a second edition
of the same man."

"His brother," explained Agatha, who saw Fitz coming, although she was
apparently looking the other way.

"Royal Navy," muttered Carr.

"Yes."

"Then I'm off.  Can't get on with Royal Navy men, somehow."

With a jovial nod and something remarkably near a wink, Willie Carr
left her, shouldering his way through the crowd with that good-natured
boisterousness of manner which is accepted by the world for honesty.

Agatha was looking the other way when Fitz came to her, and he was
forced to touch her and repeat his desire to be accorded a dance before
she became aware of his proximity.

"Certainly," she answered rather carelessly, "if you want one.
I--"--she paused with infinite skill and looked down at her own
dress--"I thought I had displeased you."

Fitz looked slightly surprised.

"What an absurd thing to think!" he said rather lamely.

She glanced up with pert coquetry.

"Then it was only oblivion or indifference."

"What was only oblivion or indifference?" he asked, still smiling as he
compared cards.

"Your very obvious delay in coming," she answered.  "Considering that
we have known each other since we were children, it is only natural
that I should want to dance with you."

"Considering that we have known each other since we were children," he
said, repeating her words and tone, "may I have a third?"

"Yes," with a frank nod.  "And"--she paused, and looking round saw Luke
going away in the opposite direction with Mrs. Harrington--"and will
you take me to have some coffee now?  I am engaged for this dance, but
no matter."

Fitz gave her his arm and turned to hitch his sword higher.  He made
sure that the blade was well home, shutting in the little red spot of
gathering rust--a tear.

When they had at length passed through the eager crowd and found a
resting-place in a smaller room, Agatha looked up at Fitz as he handed
her her coffee, and did not pretend to hide the admiration with which
she regarded him.

"You know," she said, "you are a great favourite with Mrs. Harrington."

"She is always very kind to me."

Fitz was a difficult person to gossip with by reason of his quiet
directness of manner.  He had a way of abruptly finishing his speech
without the usual lowering of the voice.  And it is just that small
drop of half a tone that invites further confidence.  In such small
matters as these lies the secret of conversational success, and by such
trivial tricks of the tongue we are daily and hourly deceived. The man
or the woman who lowers the tone at the end of speech defers to the
listener's opinion, and usually receives it.  The manner with which
Fitz broke off led his listener to believe that he was not attending to
the conversation.  Agatha therefore baited her hook more heavily.

"Like many women, she thinks that sailors are superior to the rest of
mankind," she said, with just enough lightness of tone to be converted
into a screen if necessary.  But she heaved a little sigh before she
drank her coffee.

Fitz had not decided whether all this referred to himself or to Luke.
He hoped that Agatha had, so to speak, brought her guns to bear upon
him, because of himself he was sure, of Luke he was doubtful.  As a
matter of curiosity he pursued the conversation.

"And you," he said, "look upon such mistaken persons with the mingled
pity and contempt that they deserve?"

"No," she answered, with audacious calmness, as she rose and passed
before him; "for I think the same."

She cleverly deprived him of the opportunity of answering, and pushed
her way through the crowd alone, allowing him to follow.

Before she danced with him again, she danced with Luke, and her humour
seemed to have undergone a change.

There are some men who, like salmon, never go back.  They push on, and
that which they have gained they hold to though it cost them their
lives.  Luke FitzHenry was one of these, and Agatha found that in the
London ball-room she could take back nothing that she had given on
board the Croonah.  Luke, it is to be presumed, had old-fashioned
theories which have fallen into disuse in these practical modern days
wherein we flirt for one night only, for a day, for a week, according
to convenience.  He could not lay aside the voyage to Malta and that
which occurred then as a matter of the past; and Agatha, surprised and
at a loss, did not seem to know how to make him do so.

She learnt with a new wonder that the rest of this ball--namely, that
part of his programme which did not refer to her, the dances he was to
dance with partners other than herself--counted as nothing. For him
this ball was merely herself.  There was not another woman in the
room--for him.  He told her this and other things.  Moreover, the sound
of it was quite new to her.  For the modern young man does not make
serious love to such women as Agatha Ingham-Baker.



CHAPTER VI.  THE COUNT STANDS BY.

     La discretion d'un homme est d'autant plus grande qu'on lui
demande davantage.

"I want you to ask me to dinner!"

The Count de Lloseta bowed as he made this remark, and looked at his
companion with a smile.

At times Mrs. Harrington gave way to a momentary panic in respect to
Cipriani de Lloseta--when she was not feeling very well, perhaps. Her
situation seemed to be somewhat that of a commander holding an
impregnable position against a cunning foe.  For every position of such
a nature is impenetrable only so long as it can meet and defy each new
engine of warfare that is brought against it.  And one day the fatal
engine is invented.

Mrs. Harrington looked into his face with a flicker in her drawn grey
eyes.  Then she gave a little laugh which was not quite free from
uneasiness.

"Why?" she asked sardonically.  "Have you fallen in love with some one
at last?"

She knew that this taunt would hurt him.  Besides, she liked to throw
it at the memory of a woman whom she had hated--Cipriani de Lloseta's
dead wife.

"I should like to be of your party to-night," he said quietly.

She gave another scornful laugh, with that ring of malice in it which
thrills in the voice of some elderly women when they speak of young
girls.

"Eve is to be of our party to-night," she said.  "Ah--that would be too
absurd--a new Adam!  You!  But, mind you, Agatha will be here too.  You
will have to be careful how you play your cards, Don Juan! However, we
dine at eight, and I shall be glad to see you."

De Lloseta took up his hat and stick.  With Mrs. Harrington, and with
no one else perhaps in London, he still observed the stiff Spanish
manner.  He bowed without offering to shake hands, and left her.

Mrs. Harrington--cold, calculating, essentially worldly--looked at the
closed door with deep speculation in her eyes.  They were hard eyes,
such as are only to be seen in a woman's face; for an old man has
usually picked up a little charity somewhere on the road through life.

Then she looked at a hundred-pound note which he had tossed across the
table to her with a silent Catalonian contempt earlier in the
proceedings.

"I thought he was rather easy to manage," she said, examining the note.
"I thought he wanted something.  He has paid this--for his dinner."

The Count moreover appeared to consider the entertainment cheap at the
price, if his manner was to be relied upon.  For he entered the
drawing-room at eight o'clock the same evening with an unusually
pleasant air of anticipatory enjoyment.  He shook hands quite gaily
with Mrs. Ingham-Baker, who bridled stoutly, and thought that he was a
very distinguished-looking man despite his dark airs.  He received
Agatha's careless nod and shake of the hand with a murmured politeness;
with Eve he shook hands in silence.  Then he turned rather suddenly
upon Fitz and held out his hand gravely.

"I congratulate you," he said.  "When I last had the pleasure of seeing
you, I did not suspect that I was entertaining a great man
unawares--you were too humble."

Fitz involuntarily glanced towards Eve, knowing that the speaker had a
second meaning.  Eve was watching the Count rather curiously, as if
wondering how he would greet Fitz.  Every one in the room was looking
at the Count de Lloseta; for this quiet-spoken Spaniard was a distinct
factor in the life of each one of them.

They fell to talking of commonplace matters, and presently Mrs.
Harrington rustled in.  The servants were only awaiting her arrival to
announce that dinner was ready.

She looked round.

"We are short of men," she said.  "We miss Luke, do we not?"

She looked straight at Agatha, who returned her stare with audacious
imperturbability.  It was only Luke's presence that unsteadied her.
When he was away, she could hold her own against the world.

"I have never seen Luke," said Eve to the Count, who had been commanded
to offer her his arm.  "I am so sorry to have missed him."

Agatha, who was in front, beneath them on the stairs, turned and looked
up at her with a strange smile.  She either did not heed the Count, or
she undervalued his powers of observation.

"You would undoubtedly have liked him," said the Spaniard.

At the table there was considerable arranging of the seats, and finally
De Lloseta was placed at one side with Mrs. Ingham-Baker, while the two
girls sat side by side opposite to them.

Fitz was at the foot of the table.

In the course of conversation the Spaniard leant across and said to
Agatha--

"Have you seen this month's Commentator, Miss Ingham-Baker?"

An unaccountable silence fell upon the assembled guests.  Eve
Challoner's face turned quite white.  Her eyes were lowered to her
plate.  No one looked at her except the Count, and his glance was
momentary.

"Yes--and of course I have read the Spanish sketch.  I suppose every
one in London has!  It makes me want to go to Spain."

Mrs. Ingham-Baker bridled and glanced at the Spaniard.  Agatha might be
a countess yet--a foreign one, but still a countess.  Fitz was looking
at De Lloseta.  He naturally concluded that it was he who had written
the article.  He was still watching his face when the Spaniard turned
to him and said--

"And you, Fitz?  You know something about the matter too!"

And Eve Challoner betrayed herself completely.  No one happened to be
looking at her except Cipriani de Lloseta, and he saw that not only had
she written the celebrated articles, but that she loved Fitz.  Fitz's
opinion was the only one worth hearing.  In her anxiety to hear it, she
quite forgot to guard her secret.

"Yes," answered Fitz, wondering what De Lloseta was leading up to. "I
have read them both, of course.  I hope there are more.  The man knows
what he is writing about."

"He does," said the Count, smiling across the table at Eve.

The girl was moistening her lips, which seemed suddenly to have become
dry and feverish.  Her hands were trembling.  She had evidently been
terribly afraid of the opinion so innocently asked by the Spaniard.

De Lloseta changed the subject at once.  He had found out all that he
wanted to know, and more.  He had no intention of forcing a confidence
upon Eve.

The burthen of the conversation fell upon his shoulders.  Fitz, no
great talker at any time, was markedly quiet.  He had nothing to offer
for the general delectation.  His remarks upon all subjects mooted were
laconic and valueless.  The duties as temporary host occupied him for
the moment, and his thoughts were obviously elsewhere.  His attitude
towards Eve had been friendly, but rather reserved.  There was no
suggestion of sulkiness, but on the other hand he had failed to take
advantage of one or two opportunities which she had given him of
referring to the past and to any mutual obligations or common interests
they had had therein.  It happened that Agatha had heard her give him
these openings, and had noticed his lack of enterprise.

Agatha Ingham-Baker had long before conceived a strange
suspicion--namely, that Eve and Fitz loved each other.  She had
absolutely nothing to base her suspicions upon, not so much even as the
gossips of Majorca.  And nevertheless her suspicions throve, as such
do, and grew into conviction.

Agatha had come down early to the drawing-room on purpose to establish
her right over Fitz.  She found De Lloseta in the hall, and he followed
her into the room.  Whenever she attempted to demonstrate her right to
the attention of the only young man present by one of those little
glances or words with which women hurt each other, De Lloseta seemed to
step in, intercepting with his dark smile.  At dinner, when Fitz was
absent-minded, Agatha managed to show the others that she alone could
follow him into the land of his reflections and call him back from
thence.  But on several occasions, when she was about to turn to him
with a smile which was especially reserved for certain young men under
certain circumstances, Cipriani de Lloseta spoke to her and spoilt the
small manoeuvre.

Eve saw it all.  She saw more than the acute Spaniard.  Firstly,
because she was a woman.  Secondly, because she loved Fitz. Thirdly,
because the inken curse was hers in a small degree, and people who
dabble in ink often wade deep into human nature.



CHAPTER VII.  A VOYAGE.

     And hence one master passion in the breast,
     Like Aaron's serpent, swallows all the rest.

Life is, after all, a matter of habit.  In those families where rapid
consumption is hereditary, the succeeding generations seem to get into
the habit of dying early.  They take it, without complaint, as a matter
of course.  Sailors and other persons who lead a rough and hazardous
life seem also to acquire this philosophy of existence.  Luke FitzHenry
went to sea again on the day appointed for the Croonah to leave London,
without so much as a snarl at Fate.

It was a great wrench to him to leave Agatha again so soon, in the
first full force of his passion.  But he left her almost happily. His
love for her was rising up and filling his whole existence.  And it is
not those lives that are frittered away in a thousand pastimes that are
happy.  It is the strong life wholly absorbed by one great interest, be
it love or be it merely money-making.

Luke had hitherto been rather an aimless man.  He was a brilliant
sailor, not because he set himself to the task, but merely because
seamanship was born in him, together with a dogged steadiness of nerve
and a complete fearlessness.  It was so easy to be a good sailor that
he had not even the satisfaction of having to make an effort.  His
heart was empty.  He had indeed the sea, but his love of it was
unconscious.  Away from it, he was ill at ease; on its breast, he was
not actively happy--he was merely at home.  But he had no career.  He
had no great prize to aim for, and his combative nature required one.
He had no career to make, for he was already near the summit of the
humble ladder on which Fate had set his feet.

Then came Agatha, and the empty heart was filled with a dangerous
suddenness.

The pain which this parting caused him had something of pleasure in it.
There are some men and many women who doubt love unless it bring actual
pain with it.  Luke had always mistrusted fate, and had love brought
happiness with it he would probably have doubted its genuineness.  He
hugged all his doubts, his jealousies, his passionate thoughts to
himself.  He had nothing to cling to.  Agatha had never told him that
she loved him.  But she was for him so entirely apart from all other
women that it seemed necessary that he also should not be as other men
for her.  Not much for a lover to live upon during four or five months!

Agatha had given him a photograph of herself--a fashionable picture in
an affected pose in evening dress--but she had absolutely refused to
write.  This photograph Luke put into a frame, and as soon as the
Croonah was out of dock he hung it up in his little cabin.  His servant
saw it and recognised the fair passenger of a former voyage, but he
knew his place and his master too well to offer any comment.

Unlike the ordinary young man, whose thoughts are lightly turned to
love, Luke was no worse a sailor for his self-absorption.  All his
care, all his keen, fearless judgment were required; for the Croonah
ran through a misty channel into a boisterous Atlantic.

He stood motionless at his post, as was his wont, keen and alert for
the moment, but living in the past.  He saw again Mrs. Harrington's
drawing-room as he had last seen it, with Agatha sitting in a low chair
near the fire, while Mrs. Harrington wrote at her desk, and Mrs.
Ingham-Baker read the Times.

"I have come," he remembered saying, "to bid you good-bye."

He heard again the rustle of Mrs. Ingham-Baker's newspaper, and again
he saw the look in Agatha's eyes as they met his.  He would remember
that look to the end of his life; he was living on it now. Agatha, in
her rather high-pitched society tones, was the first to speak.

"If I were a sailor," she said, "I would never say good-bye.  It is
better to drop in and pay a call; at the end one might casually mention
the words."

"Oh! we grow accustomed to it," Luke answered.

"Do you?" the girl inquired, with an enigmatical smile, and her answer
was in his eyes.  She did not want him to grow accustomed to saying
farewell to her.

Luke FitzHenry was not inclined to sociability--the stronger sort of
man rarely is.  On board the Croonah he was usually considered morose
and self absorbed.  He did his duty, and in this was second to no man
on board; but he was content to get the passengers to their
destination, looking upon the Croonah as a mere conveyance for a
certain number of chattering, gossiping, mischief-making live-stock.
He utterly failed in his social duties; he did not cultivate the art of
making his ship a sort of floating "hydro".

The boisterous weather kept the decks fairly select until Gibraltar had
been left behind in the luminous haze that hangs over the mouth of the
Mediterranean in a westerly breeze.  But in the smoother waters of the
Southern seas the passengers plucked up courage, and one morning at
breakfast Luke perceived a tall, heavy-shouldered man nodding
vigorously, and wiping his mouth with a napkin, which he subsequently
waved with friendly jocularity.

"Morning--morning!" he cried.

"Good morning," replied Luke, passing to his seat at the after-end of
the saloon.  He had recognised the man at once, although he had only
exchanged a few words with him in a crowded ball-room. Everything
connected with Agatha, however remotely, seemed to engrave itself
indelibly on his mind.  This was Willie Carr, the man to whom Agatha
had introduced him at the naval orphanage ball. Willie Carr was on
board the Croonah, evidently quite at home, and bound for India, for he
was seated at the Indian table.

It was not necessary for Luke to make inquiries about this passenger,
because his brother officers soon began to speak of him. By some means
Carr made himself popular among the officers, and gradually began to
enjoy privileges denied to his fellow passengers. He frequently visited
the engine-room, and was always to be seen after meals in, or in the
neighbourhood of, the smoking-room, in conversation with one or other
of the Croonah's officers, who were generally found to be smoking
Carr's cigars.

Despite many obvious and rather noisy overtures of friendship, Luke
FitzHenry held aloof until the Aden light was left behind.  He
succeeded in limiting his intercourse to an exchange of passing remarks
on the weather until the Croonah had rounded Pointe de Galle and was
heading northwards.  Then arose circumstances which brought them
together, and possibly served Willie Carr's deliberate purpose.

Carr was travelling without his wife--he was the sort of man who does
travel without his wife.  She, poor woman, had made one initial
mistake, namely, in marrying him, and such mistakes are sometimes paid
for by a life of atonement to the gods.  She remained at home to care
for an ever-increasing family on a small housekeeping allowance, which
was not always paid.

This wife was the only point in his favour which had presented itself
to Luke's mind, for the latter resented a certain tone of easy
familiarity, which Agatha seemed to take as a matter of course.

Luke was afraid of being questioned about Agatha, and he therefore kept
Carr at a respectful distance.  He harboured no personal dislike
towards the man, whose bluff and honest manner made him popular among
his fellows.

It was the evening of the first day in the Bay of Bengal that a steamer
passed the Croonah, running south, and flying a string of signals.  The
Croonah replied, and the homeward-bound vessel disappeared in the
gathering twilight with her code flags still flying.

"What did she say?" asked the passengers.

"Nothing," replied the officers; "only the weather.  It is the change
of the monsoon."

At dinner the captain was remarkably grave; he left the table early,
having eaten little.  The officers were reticent, as was their wont.
Luke FitzHenry, it was remarked and remembered afterwards, alone
appeared to be in good spirits.

After dinner a busybody in the shape of a too intelligent young
coffee-planter, who possessed an aneroid barometer, brought that
instrument to the smoking-room with a scared face.  The needle was
deflected to a part of the dial which the intelligent young planter had
hitherto considered to be merely ornamental and not intended for
practical use.  His elders and betters told him to put it away and not
to tell the ladies.  Then they continued smoking; but they knew that
they had just seen such a barometer as few men care to look upon.

The word "cyclone" was whispered in one corner of the cabin, and a
white-moustached general was understood to mutter--

"Damned young fool!" as he pulled at his cheroot.

The whisperer did not hear the remark, and went on to give further
information on atmospheric disturbances.  Suddenly the field-officer
jumped to his feet.

"Look here, sir!" he cried.  "If we are in for a cyclone, I trust that
we know how to behave as men--and die as men, if need be!  But don't
let us have any whispering in corners, like a lot of schoolgirls.  We
are in the care of good men, and all we have to do is to obey orders,
and--damn it, sir!--to remember we're Englishmen!"

The general walked out of the smoking-saloon, and the first sight that
greeted his eyes was Luke FitzHenry, quick, keen, and supernaturally
calm, standing over a group of Malay sailors who were hard at work
getting in awnings.  The white-haired soldier stood and watched with
the grim silence which he had showed to death before now.  He was of
the Indian army.  He had led the black man to victory and death, and he
knew to a nerve the sensitive Asiatic organisation.  He saw that it was
good and not for the first time he noted the sheep-like dependence with
which the black men grouped themselves round their white leader,
watching his face, taking their cue in expression, in attitude, even in
their feelings from him.

"Good man," muttered the general to himself.

He stood there alone while the ship was stripped of every awning, while
the decks were cleared of all that hamper which makes the passenger an
encumbrance at sea.  There was no shouting, no confusion, no sign of
fear.  In a marvellously short time the broad decks were lying bare and
clear, all loose things were stowed away or made fast, and the Croonah
stood ready for her great fight.

All the while an arc of black cloud had been growing on the horizon.
There was not a breath of wind.  From the engine-rooms the thud of the
piston-rods came throbbing up with a singular distinctness.  The arc of
cloud had risen halfway to the meridian.  There were streaks in
it--streaks of yellow on black.  Far away to the north, at the point of
contact with the horizon, a single waterspout rose like a black pillar
from sea to cloud.  Dwellers in the cool and temperate zones would have
thought that the end of the world was about to come.  Men, standing
quite still, felt the drops of perspiration trickling beneath their
ears.  The air taken into the lungs seemed powerless to expand them.
The desire to take a deeper breath was constant and oppressive.

A quartermaster brought a message to the general that he must go below
or else come up to the lower bridge.  He could not stay where he was.
The captain said that the cyclone might break at any moment.  The old
soldier nodded, and made his way to the lower bridge.  Before he had
been there long he was joined by Carr, who carried a mackintosh over
his arm.  The two men nodded.  The general rather liked Carr.  He was a
Harrovian, and the general's son was at Harrow.

"Going to see it out on deck?" he inquired.

"Rather.  I'm not going to be drowned like a rat in a trap!" replied
Carr, jovial still, and brave.

Luke came to the bridge and took up his position by the side of the
captain.  No one spoke.

From the distant horizon--from the north where the waterspout still
was--a long groan floated over the water.  There was a green line on
the black surface of the ocean, dark green flecked with white; it was
spreading over the sea, and coming towards them.  Luke turned and said
one word to the quartermaster.  The man went to the wheelhouse and
brought out three long black oilskin coats--two for the captain and
Luke, the other for himself.

The groan, like that of an animal in pain, was repeated.  It seemed
farther off.  Then a sound like the escape of steam from an engine came
apparently from the sky.

Luke said something to the captain, and pointed with his right hand.
They consulted together in a whisper, and the captain made a signal to
the two steersmen motionless in the wheelhouse.  The well-greased
chains ran smoothly, and the great black prow of the Croonah crept
slowly round the horizon pointing out to sea, away from the land.
Ceylon lay astern of them in the darkness which was almost like night.

The captain and Luke stood side by side on the little bridge, far above
the deck.  They had exchanged their gold-braided caps for sou'westers.
The outline of their black forms was just distinguishable against the
sky.  They were looking straight ahead into the yellow streaks, out
over the flecked sea.  And not a breath of wind stirred the leaden
atmosphere.

Looking down on the broad decks, it would seem at first that they were
deserted, but as the eye became accustomed to the gloom, men standing
like shadows could be perceived here and there--at their posts--waiting.

All the skylights had been doubly tarpaulined.  Some of them had been
strengthened with battens lashed transversely over the canvas. All that
mortal brain could devise mortal hand had done.  The rest was with God.

The decks were quite dark, for the skylights were covered, even those
of the engine-room, and the men at work down there in the stifling heat
knew not what the next moment might bring.  They had nothing to guide
them as to the moment when the hurricane would strike the ship.  For
the last five minutes they had been holding on to their life-rails with
both hands, expecting to be thrown among the machinery at every second.

Still there was no breath of wind.  The darkness was less intense. A
yellow glow seemed to be behind the cloud.

Then a strange feeling of being drawn upward came to all, and strong
men gasped for breath.  It was only for a moment.  But the sensation
was that the air was being sucked up to the sky, leaving a vacuum on
the face of the waters.

Suddenly the captain's voice startled the night, rising trumpet-like
above the hiss of the steam.

"Stand BY!" he cried.

Luke looked down to the lower bridge.

"You had better hold on to something," he called, and as he spoke the
hurricane struck the Croonah.  It can only be described as a pushing
smack.  She rolled slowly over before it, and it seemed that she would
never stop.



CHAPTER VIII.  A GREAT FIGHT.

     Who knows?  The man is proven by the hour.

The sea seemed to rise up and fall on the disabled ship with a wild
fury.  There was a strange suggestion of passion in every wave as it
crashed over the bulwarks.  In the roar of the hurricane there was a
faint sound of crackling wood.  The deck was at an angle of thirty. The
port boats on their davits were invisible; they were under water.  If
the Croonah righted quickly those boats would break up like old baskets.

The two men on the lower bridge stood on the uprights of the rail,
leaning against the deck as against a wall.  The crackling sound like
breaking matchwood seemed to come from above.  Carr looked up and saw
the captain and Luke at the wheel.  The wheelhouse had collapsed like a
card house; it had simply been blown away, and one of the helmsmen with
it.  The other was lying huddled up at the lower end of the narrow
bridge.

For a moment the darkness lifted and the survivors saw a weird sight.
One of the starboard boats, attached to the davit by only one fall, was
held by the wind like a flag straight out over the deck.  Already two
men were clambering to the upper bridge to take the place of the
helmsmen who were dead.  Relieved from the wheel, Luke dragged himself
up to the ladder leading from the upper to the lower deck.  A few
moments later they saw him cutting with a hatchet at the ropes holding
the boat to the davit.  There were four, for it was a heavy boat, held
by a double block.  He cut two at a stroke: the others ran out
instantly.  The boat disappeared to leeward like a runaway hat, and
fell with a splash into the foaming sea.

The Croonah seemed to feel the relief.  She rose a little to windward,
but her lee-rail was still under water.  Down in the scuppers, in the
tangle of ropes and splintered wood, sundry dark forms, looking more
like bundles of dirty rags than anything else, rolled and tossed
helplessly.  These were dead and drowning men. Already the European
sailors were at work, some cutting away useless top-hamper, others
attempting to drag the terror-stricken Malays to a place of comparative
safety.  Luke FitzHenry took command of these men, as was his duty,
working like one of them, with infinite daring.  He could only
communicate with his captain by signs, speech being impossible.  It was
a seaman's fight.  Each man did that which seemed to him expedient for
the safety of the ship.  The Croonah was fully equipped for fine
weather--for cleaning brasses and swabbing decks and bending awnings;
but for bad weather--notably for a cyclone--she was perilously
undermanned.  Half of the native crew were paralysed by fear, many were
killed, others drowned from a mere incapacity to hold on.

The other officers of the ship had their hands more than full.  The
doctor was below in the saloon surrounded by a babel of shrieking women
and white-faced men; the engineers were on watch at their deadly posts
in the heart of the ship.

Carr turned and clambered down the iron ladder to the upper deck. He
was half a sailor and quite an Englishman.  Moreover he came from
Harrow, where they teach a certain bull-dog courage.

Luke, working half blinded by spray and salt water, presently found a
strong man working at his side.  Together they cut away the submerged
boats, standing to their waists in water, at infinite peril of their
lives; together they made their way forward to help the chief officer
and his devoted gang, who were cutting away the foremast and the
wreckage of forward boats.

Through the long hours of the night these dauntless men worked
unceasingly, and--incongruous practical details--the stewards brought
them food at stated intervals, while two men served out spirits all the
while.  Slowly, inch by inch, they righted the ship, bringing her
stubborn prow gradually into the wind; and all the while the engines
throbbed, all the while the grimy stokers shovelled coal into the
furnaces, all the while the engineers stood and watched their engines.

Dawn broke on a terrific sea and a falling wind.  The night was over
and the dread Bay had had her thousand lives and more, for a cyclone
simply wipes out the native craft like writing on a slate.  The Croonah
had been right through the corner of the worst cyclone of a generation.
Luke crawled back to the bridge where the captain stood, as he had
stood all night, motionless.  Sheer skill and a great experience had
pulled the Croonah through.

When the danger was past those who were on deck saw a man in shirt and
trousers only, his grey hair ruffled, his clothes glued to his limbs by
perspiration, emerge from the bowels of the ship.  He came on deck,
passed by those who scarce knew him without his gold braid, and slowly
climbed the ladder to the bridge.  There, in the early morning light,
the two men who had saved three hundred lives--the captain and the
chief engineer--silently shook hands.

"I had to keep you down there for the safety of the ship," said the
captain gruffly.

"All right, old man, I knew that."

The old engineer turned and looked fore and aft over the wrecked decks
with a curious smile as if he had come back from another world.

While they stood there the saloon doors were opened and a haggard row
of faces peered out.  A quarter-master held the passengers back, for
the decks were unsafe.  Railings and bulwarks were gone, boats smashed,
awning stanchions twisted and bent.  No landsmen could be trusted to
move safely amid such confusion.

And all the while the engines throbbed, and the Croonah held proudly on
her course to the north--battered, torn, and sore stricken, yet a
victor.

After changing their clothes, Luke and Carr breakfasted together at the
after-end of the second officer's table in the saloon.  With a certain
humour the captain allowed of no relaxation in the discipline of the
ship.  The breakfast bell was rung at the usual time, the meal was
served with the usual profusion, even the menus were written as
carefully as ever; and some good ladies opined that the captain must be
a godless man, because forsooth he did not cringe beneath the wing of
the passing Angel of Death.

"I am glad I saw that," said Carr, neat and clean, hearty and smiling
as usual.

Luke looked up from a generous plate.  He thought that Carr was
indulging in bravado, but he relinquished this opinion when he saw the
man's face and his helping of bacon and eggs.  Carr seemed to have
enjoyed the cyclone, as he had no doubt enjoyed many a game of football
in his youth, and many a spin across country later.  For this man kept
his hunters.  He was moved thereto by that form of self-respect which
urges some men to live like gentlemen, to, as they express it, "do
themselves well," whether their mere monetary circumstances allow of it
or no; and some one usually pays for these philosophers--that is the
annoying part of it.

"By gad!  I didn't think it could blow like that, though!" Carr went
on, with his mouth full.

"I don't think it can often," replied Luke.  He could not help liking
this man, despite his first prejudice against him.  Besides, they had
stood shoulder to shoulder, with death around them, and such moments
draw differing men together.  It is the required touch of Nature, this
same death, which frightens us before it comes and seems so gentle when
it is here.

"I always wanted to see a cyclone," went on Carr conversationally, "and
now I'm satisfied.  I have had enough.  I shouldn't have cared for
more.  Pass, cyclones!"

"It is not many men who have your laudable thirst for experience," said
Luke.  "It is rather a strenuous form of pleasure."

"Pleasure!" answered Carr, with one of his sharp glances. "Pleasure, be
d--d!  It's business, sir, business.  I mean to make money out of
cyclones."

"How?  Bottle them up and make them turn a windmill?"

"No, sir."

Carr turned round to make sure that he could not be overheard.

"No, sir.  Your idea is not bad in the main, though hardly practicable.
No.  I know a dodge worth two of that!  I told you before that I am in
the marine insurance line.  Now, the funny part of the marine insurance
line is that the majority of the men engaged in it do not know their
business.  Now I propose to teach these gentlemen their business."

"Will they thank you for it?" asked Luke.

"They'll pay me for it, which is better, by a long chalk!  Ha, ha!
Butter, please."

"And what have cyclones got to do with it?"

Again one of the sharp glances which sat so strangely on Carr's open
countenance.

"I understand there is a science of cyclones," he said quietly.

"Yes."

"Which means that you chaps knew what was coming forty-eight hours ago?"

"Yes," replied Luke.

"That that steamer flying signals yesterday was talking to you about
it?"

"Yes."

"And that when you got into it you knew exactly whereabout you were in
it; where the centre was, and which was the shortest way out of it, to
get clear away from the vortex and beyond the axis line, so as not to
get into it again?"

"Yes.  You're quite a Fitzroy."

Carr winked cheerily.

"And all this is a certainty?"

"A dead certainty," replied Luke.  "It is a science."

Carr laid down his knife and fork.

"Suppose," he said, "that the next cyclone sends forty ships to kingdom
come, and I've got a line of five hundred or a thousand insured on
every one of them.  I'll study these jolly old cyclones. It will be
easy enough to know about when they'll be coming.  When one is about
I'll have a line on every ship at sea between Colombo and Penang--do
you see?  I'll get a man on the coast here to watch the weather.  When
there's a cyclone in the Bay of Bengal he will wire me home one word,
'Milksop,' or 'Spongecake,' or something soft and innocent.  I'll do
the rest, my boy."

Luke was only pretending to eat.  The desire to make money was strong
upon him--as indeed were all his desires--it was almost a passion; for
money meant Agatha, and Agatha had grown to be the one absorbing
passion of his heart.  Agatha had been at the back of the superhuman
fight which he had waged all night against death.  Agatha was behind
Carr's words.  The thought of her was tempting him through the man's
arguments.

"But what will you insure?" he asked.

"Profit," replied Carr, in a whisper.  "It is done every day--policy
proof of interest--the fools!"

"What is policy proof of interest?"

"It means that they admit your insurance to be valid, whether you have
anything on board the ship or not.  It is not legal, but they know it
when they sign the policy; and they know that it would ruin them if
they refused to pay an 'honour policy.'  I tell you they don't know
their business and they have no combination.  They all distrust each
other, and tell lies to each other about their profits and their
losses.  If I insure profit I have only to say that I shall lose money
if the ship does not reach her destination and deliver her cargo
safely.  The cargo may be mine; I may be buying it or selling it; no
one can tell, and the underwriters don't ask. They pocket their
premium, and if they have to pay, and think they have been rooked, they
keep it to themselves, because each man is against his neighbour."

"But do they know nothing about cyclones?" inquired Luke.

"My good sir, they hardly know the difference between Calcutta and
Bombay.  Half of them think that a cyclone and a monsoon are the same
thing, and not one in ten could tell you the difference between a brig
and a barquentine."

Luke gave a little half-convinced laugh.  The man was so open and
honest that his arguments had nothing underhand or crafty in them.

"It sounds very simple," he said.

"It is; d--d simple!  So are the underwriters; but that is not our
business.  You see, FitzHenry, in all commerce there are a certain
number of fools for the wise men to outwit.  In marine insurance there
are a large number.  All insurance is nothing but a bet, and betting is
a matter of intelligence.  We bring more intelligence to bear upon it
than the other chap, therefore we win."

He helped himself to marmalade with a jaunty hand.  Luke hardly noticed
the easy transition from "I" to "we."  He had had no intention of
suggesting a partnership in this easy manner of making money, but the
partnership seemed to have formed itself.

"But--" Carr paused, holding in the air an emphatic spoon.  "But, my
boy, we want capital, we want to lay our hands on fifty thousand
pounds."

"I am afraid I could not lay my hand on fifty thousand pence," said
Luke.

Carr glanced at him sharply.  There was a little pause while Carr ate
marmalade and toast.

"Oh yes, you could," he said in a low tone.  "Between us we could raise
fifty thousand as easy as winking."

As if to demonstrate the facility of the latter, he looked up and
closed his left eye confidentially.

"You're a sailor," he went on to say, "and a ripping good one at that.
You know the perils of the deep, as the parsons say.  It wouldn't be
hard for you to tell when the Croonah was running into a tight place
like yesterday.  All you have to do is to wire home one word to me.  My
telegraphic address is 'Simple, London.'  Say you wire home 'Milksop.'
We could fix on 'Milksop'; it sounds so innocent!  In twenty-four hours
I'd have fifty thousand done on the Croonah in London, Glasgow,
Liverpool, New York, Paris, and Germany--spread about, you know.  In
four or five days the Croonah goes to the bottom, and we scoop in, your
name never appearing--see?"

There was a little pause.

"See?" repeated Carr, in little more than a whisper.  Luke looked up.
He met Carr's eyes and knew that he was dealing with a villain. The
strange part of it was that he felt no anger.  He could not free his
mind from the thought of Agatha.  There was one corner of the steamer
which was almost sacred to him--the little space behind the deckhouse
where he had held Agatha in his arms for one moment of intense
happiness--where she told him that she could not be poor.

Carr rose and threw down his table napkin with a certain grand air
which was his.

"It would be the making of you," he said.  "It is worth thinking about."

He threw back his shoulders--a trick common enough with strongly built
men who incline to stoutness--nodded, and left him.  He passed down the
length of the saloon, seeking his cigar-case in the pocket of his coat,
exchanging loud and hearty greetings with those among the passengers
whom he knew.  He was popular on account of the open British frankness
which he cultivated, and which is supposed to be the outward sign of an
honest heart.  He seemed to be thinking of his great scheme no longer,
but he left Luke to brood over it--to try and chase the word "Milksop"
from his brain, where it seemed to be indelibly engraved.

He left Luke to fight against a great temptation alone and heavily
handicapped, for Luke FitzHenry was held as in a vice by his passionate
love for Agatha.  It is not all men who can love.  It is only a few who
are capable of a deep passion.  This is as rare as genius.  A man of
genius is usually a failure in all except his own special line.  The
man who can and does love passionately must be a good man indeed if his
love do not make a villain of him.



CHAPTER IX.  THE EDITOR'S ROOM.

     The greater man, the greater courtesy.

The Count de Lloseta and John Craik were sitting together in the
editorial room of the Commentator.

It was a quiet room, with double windows and a permanent odour of
tobacco smoke.  An empty teacup stood on the table by John Craik's
elbow.

"Name of God!" Cipriani de Lloseta had ejaculated when he saw it. "At
eleven o'clock in the morning!"

"Must stir the brain up," was the reply.

"I would not do it with a teaspoon," De Lloseta had answered, and then
he sat down to correct the proof of Eve's fourth article on "Spain and
Spanish Life."

They had been sitting thus together for half an hour in friendly
silence, only broken by an occasional high-class Spanish anathema
hurled at the head of the printer.

"A dog's trade!" ejaculated De Lloseta at last, leaning back and
throwing down his pen, "a dog's trade, my friend!"

"It is mine," replied Craik, without looking up.  In fiction he was
celebrated for a certain smartness of dialogue.  His printed
conversations were pretty displays of social sword-play.  It had become
a sort of habit with him to thrust and parry quickly; but the sudden
smile on his lined face, the kindly glance from behind the spectacles,
always took away the sting and demonstrated that it was mere "copy," to
fill up the dull columns of life and throw in a sparkle here and there.

"Have you finished?" he inquired.

"Yes, thank Heaven!  I was not intended for a literary calling. That is
number four, and I am not paid--I am not paid; there lies the sting."

"Number four, yes; two published and two in hand," replied John Craik.
His mind was busy elsewhere; it was with the creatures of his own
imagination, living their lives, rejoicing with them, sorrowing with
them.

The Count rose and walked gravely to the hearthrug, holding the
proof-sheets in his hand.

"Number four," he reiterated.  "Will they go on, my friend?"

John Craik looked up sharply.

"No."

"How many more will you accept?"

"Two more at the outside, making six in all.  The public is like a
greedy child, it must be stopped before it makes itself sick. Nausea
leaves a lasting distaste for that which preceded it."

The Count nodded.

"And this worldly wisdom--is it the editor or the man who speaks?"

"The editor.  The editor is a man who lives by saying 'No.'"

"And you will say 'No' to any more from this--writer's pen?"

"To any more about Spain I most certainly shall."

The Count reflected.  What little light the London day afforded fell
full upon his long narrow face, upon the pointed Velasquez chin, the
receding iron-grey hair brushed straight back.

"And the fact that the writer is supporting herself and a worn-out old
uncle by her pen will make no difference?"

John Craik hesitated for a moment.

"Not the least," he then said.  "You seem to know the writer."

"I do, and I am interested in her."

"A lady?"  John Craik was dotting his i's with the contemplativeness of
artistic finish.

"Essentially so."

"And poor?"

"Yes, and proud as--"

"A Spaniard," suggested John Craik.

"If you will.  It is a vice which has almost become a virtue in these
democratic days."

John Craik looked up.

"I will do what I can, Lloseta," he said.  "But she is not a great
writer, and will never become one."

"I know that.  Some day she will become a great lady, or I know nothing
of them."

Craik was still busy touching up his manuscript.

"I have never seen her," he said.  "But the impression I received from
her manuscripts is that she is a girl who has lived a simple life among
a simple people.  She has seen a great deal of nature, out-of-door
nature, which is pure, and cannot be too deeply studied. She has seen
very little of human nature, which is not so pure as it might be.  That
is her chief charm of style, a high-minded purity. She does not
describe the gutter and think she is writing of the street.  By the
way, I am expecting her here" (he paused, and looked at the clock on
the mantelpiece) "in exactly two minutes."

The Count rose quickly and took his hat.  As he extended his hand to
say "Good-bye" there was a rap at the door.  The discreet youth who
told John Craik's falsehoods for him came in and handed his master a
slip of paper with a name written thereon.

Craik read the inscription, crumpled up the paper, and threw it into
the waste-paper basket.

"In one minute," he said, and the liar withdrew.

Cipriani de Lloseta, with a quiet deliberation which was sometimes
almost dramatic, stooped over the paper basket and recovered the
crumpled slip of paper.  He did not unfold it, but held it out, crushed
up in his closed fist.

"Miss Eve Challoner," he said.

John Craik nodded.

De Lloseta laughed and threw the paper into the fire.

"I must not be seen.  Where do you propose to put me?"

"Go upstairs instead of down," replied John Craik, as if he had been
asked the same question before.  "Wait on the next landing until you
hear this door close; you may then escape in safety."

"Thanks--good-bye."

"Good-bye."

When Eve entered the room, John Craik was writing.  He rose with a bow
savouring of a politer age than ours, and held out his hand.

"At last," he said, "I have prevailed upon you to come and see me. Will
you sit down?  The chair is shabby, but great men and women have sat in
it."

He spoke pleasantly, with his twisted laugh, and when Eve was seated he
sat slowly, carefully down again.  He was thinking not so much of what
he was saying as of his hearer.  He saw that Eve was undeniably
beautiful--the man saw that.  The novelist saw that she was probably
interesting.  As he had just stated, great women had sat in the same
chair, and it was John Craik's impulse to save Eve from that same
greatness.  He had, since a brilliant youth at Oxford, been steeped, as
it were, in literature.  He had known all the great men and women, and
he held strong views of his own.  These were probably erroneous--many
women will think so--but he held to them.  They were based on
experience, which is not always the case with views expressed in print
and elsewhere.  John Craik held that greatness is not good for women.
That it is not for their own happiness, he knew.  That it is not for
the happiness of those around them, he keenly suspected.  Some of Eve's
celebrated predecessors in that chair had not quite understood John
Craik.  All thought that he was not sufficiently impressed--not, that
is, so impressed by them as they were themselves when they reflected
upon their own renown.

He looked at Eve quickly, rubbing his hands together.

"May I, as an old man, ask some impertinent questions?" he inquired,
with a cheerfulness which sat strangely on the wan face.

"Yes."

"Why do you write?" he said.  "Take time; answer me after reflection."

Eve reflected while the great editor stared into the fire.

"To make money," she answered at last.

He looked up, and saw that she was answering in simple good faith.

"That is right."

He did not tell her that he was sick and tired of the jargon of art for
art's sake, literature for literature's sake.  He did not tell
that--practical man of the world that he was--he had no faith in
literary art; that he believed the power of writing to be a gift and
nothing else; that the chief art in literature is that which is
unconscious of itself.

"Do you feel within yourself the makings of a great author?"

Eve laughed, a sudden girlish laugh, which made John Craik reduce his
estimate of her age by five years.

"No," she answered.

He sat up and looked at her with a kind admiration.

"You are refreshing," he said, "very, especially to a man who has seen
stout and elderly females sit in that same chair and state their
conviction that they were destined to be George Eliots or Charlotte
Brontes, women who had written one improper or irreligious novel, which
had obtained a certain success in the foolish circles."

"Do you think I have," asked Eve, "the--the makings of an income?"

John Craik reflected.

"A small one," he said bluntly.

"That is all I want."

Craik raised his eyebrows.

"And renown," he said, "do you want that?"

"Not in the least, except for its intrinsic value."

Craik banged his hand down on the arm of his chair and laughed aloud.

"This is splendid!" he cried.  "I have never met such a practical
person.  Then you would be content to work for a sufficient income
without ever being known to the world?"

"Yes, provided that the work was genuine and not given to me out of
mere charity."

The editor of the Commentator looked at her gravely.  He had suddenly
remembered Cipriani de Lloseta.

"Oh, you are proud!" he said.

Eve laughed with a negative shake of the head.

"Not more than other people," she answered.

"Not more than other people.  Well, we will have it so.  And not
ambitious."

"No, I think not."

"You may thank God for that," said John Craik, half to himself.  "An
ambitious woman is not a pleasant person."

There was a little pause, during which John Craik rubbed his chin
reflectively with his bony fingers.

"And now," he said, "that I know something about you, I will tell you
why I asked you to be good enough to come and see me.  To begin with, I
am an old man; you can see that for yourself.  I am a martyr to
rheumatism, and I frequently suffer from asthma, otherwise I should
have done myself the pleasure of calling on you.  I wanted to see you,
because lady authors are uncertain creatures.  A large majority of them
have nothing better to do, and therefore write. Others do not care for
the money, but they do most decidedly for the renown.  The nudge and
whisper of society is nectar to them.  Others again are brilliant in
flashes and dull in long periods.  Few, very few are content to work
with their pen as their poorer sisters are forced to work with their
needles.  In that lies the secret of the more permanent success of men
journalists and men authors.  The journalism and the authorship are not
the men, but merely the business of their lives.  Now will you be
content to work hard and steadily without any great hope of renown--to
work, in fact, anonymously for a small but certain income?"

"Yes," answered Eve, without hesitation.

Craik nodded his head gravely and thoughtfully.  He was too deeply
experienced to fall into the error of thinking that Eve was different
from other women.  He did not for a moment imagine that he had secured
in her a permanent subscriber to the Commentator--possibly he did not
want her as such.  He was merely doing a good deed--no new thing to
him, although his right hand hardly knew what his left was doing.  He
liked Eve, he admired her, and was interested in her.  Cipriani de
Lloseta he was deeply interested in, and he knew, with the keen
instinct of the novelist, that he was being drawn into one of those
romances of real life which exists in the matter-of-fact nineteenth
century atmosphere that we breathe.

So Eve Challoner left John Craik's office an independent woman for the
time being, and the charity was so deeply hidden that her
ever-combative pride had failed to detect it.



CHAPTER X.  THE CURTAIN LOWERS.

     The shadow, cloaked from head to foot,
     Who keeps the keys of all the creeds.

As she walked back to Grosvenor Gardens, Eve reflected with some
satisfaction that the Ingham-Bakers had left Mrs. Harrington's
hospitable roof.  From this shelter they had gone forth into a world
which is reputed cold, and has nevertheless some shelter still for such
as are prepared to cringe to the overbearing, to flatter the vain, to
worship riches.

Eve wanted time to think over her new position, to reflect with
satisfaction over her new independence, for the Caballero Challoner, if
he had bequeathed little else, had left to her a very active pride.
She knew so little of the world that she never paused to wonder why
John Craik should have made her a proposal which could hardly be
beneficial to himself.  She was innocent enough to think that the good
things of this world are given just where and when they are wanted.

Captain Bontnor was the chief object of her thoughts, and she was
already dreaming of restoring him to Malabar Cottage and his bits of
things.  So engrossed was she in these reflections, that she noticed
nothing unusual in the face of the butler who opened the door which had
shut upon Luke FitzHenry some years before.

"I'm glad you're back, miss," he said gravely.

Something in his tone--cold and correct--caught Eve's attention.

"Why?" she asked, and a consoling knowledge that the Terrific was safe
in Chatham Dockyard leapt into her mind.

"Mrs. Harrington's been took rather bad, miss."

The man's manner said more than his words.  Eve hurried upstairs to
Mrs. Harrington's bedroom.  She tapped at the door and went in without
waiting.  There was a strong smell of ammonia in the air. The blinds
were half lowered, and in the dim light Eve did not see very clearly.
Presently, from the depths of a huge four-poster bed, she descried a
pair of keen eyes--the face of Mrs. Harrington.  The face, the eyes,
the mind were alive, the body was stricken; it was almost dead already.
Mrs. Harrington looked down at the shapeless limbs beneath the coverlet
with something like fear in her eyes, something of the expression of a
dog that has been run over.  This woman meant to die hard.

Eve knew little of life, but she was no stranger to death.  She
recognised our last enemy in the grey face beneath the canopy of the
four-poster.

"Where have you been so long, child?" said Mrs. Harrington querulously,
"leaving me to these fools of servants.  I have been unwell, but I'm
better now.  They've sent for the doctor.  I shall be better presently.
I have no pain, only--only a sort of numbness."

She looked down at her left hand, which lay outside the coverlet, and
fear was in her eyes.  She had defied men too long to be afraid of God,
but she did not want to die; she had too keen an enjoyment for the good
things of this world.

Eve came to the bedside.

Mrs. Harrington's face was drawn together in anger.  She was annoyed
that Death should have come for her, and, true to herself, she insulted
him by deliberately ignoring his presence.  There was something defiant
in her cold eyes still, something unbeaten, although she knew that
there was no one on her side.  The general feeling was against her.  So
far as the world was concerned, Death could have her.

Eve turned away from the bed and faced the doctor, who was coming into
the room with Mrs. Harrington's maid.  No one displayed the slightest
emotion.  A selfish life and a happy death are rarely vouchsafed to the
same person.  The doctor did not ask Eve to stay, so she went
downstairs and wrote to Fitz, sending the note round to his rooms in
Jermyn Street by a servant.  It was the second time in her life that
she had sent for Fitz.

When the doctor came downstairs, Eve went out into the hall.  He
pointed with his finger to the room from which she came, and followed
her back there.  He was a middle-aged man, educated to the
finger-tips--all science and no heart.

"Are you a relation of Mrs. Harrington's?" he inquired.

"We are distantly connected," answered Eve.

The doctor was not giving much attention to her answer.  He had a habit
of tapping his teeth with his thumbnail, which made Eve dislike him at
sight.

"Has she any one else?" he asked.  "Any one who--cares?"

He was quite without the intention of being rude but he was absorbed in
his profession, and had a large practice.  He wanted to go.

"She has a nephew.  I have sent for him."

The doctor nodded.  He glanced at Eve, then he said quietly--

"She will live about an hour.  She wants me to come again and bring
another man.  I will do it, although it is useless.  There are some
things money cannot buy."

With a quick mechanical smile he was gone.

Eve went upstairs again to the room where Mrs. Harrington was fighting
her last fight.  As she passed up the stairs, she noticed two letters
on the hall table awaiting postage; one was addressed to Mrs.
Ingham-Baker, the other to Luke, at Malta.

Mrs. Harrington had ordered the blinds to be pulled up, and the
daylight showed her face to be little changed.  It had always been
grey; the shadows on it now were grey; the eyes were active and bright.
It was only the body that was dying; Mrs. Harrington's mind was bright
and keen as ever.

"That doctor is a fool," she said.  "I have told him to come back and
bring Sir James Harlow with him.  And will you please send and tell
Fitz that I should like to see him?  You must arrange to stay on a few
days until I am better.  Captain Bontnor will have to do without you.
My servants are not to be trusted alone.  I shall want you to keep them
in order; they require a tight reign."

"I have sent for Fitz," said Eve.

"Why?" snapped Mrs. Harrington.  "To come and make love to you? Leave
that to Agatha.  She has been teaching them both to do that for the
last three years.  Her idea is to marry the one who gets my money.
I've known that all along."

Eve's dark eyes hardened suddenly.  She could not believe what the
doctor had told her five minutes earlier.  Five minutes--one-twelfth
part of Mrs. Harrington's life ebbed away.

"Pray do not talk like that," said the girl quietly.

Mrs. Harrington's cold grey eyes fell before Eve's glance of mingled
wonder and contempt; her right hand was feebly plucking at the
counterpane.

Far below, in the basement, a bell rang, and soon after there was a
step on the stairs.

"Who is that?" inquired Mrs. Harrington.

"Fitz."

The dying woman was looking at the door with an unwonted longing in her
eyes.

"You seem to know his step," she said, with a jealous laugh.

Eve said nothing.  The door opened, and Fitz came in.

Mrs. Harrington was the first to speak.

"I am not well this morning, dear," she said.  "I sent for you because
I have a few things I want you to do for me."

"Pleasure," murmured Fitz, glancing at Eve.  He either did not know how
ill Mrs Harrington was, or he did not care.  It is probable that these
two persons now at the dying woman's bed were the only two people who
would be in any degree sorry at her death.

Eve, with a woman's instinct, busied herself with the pillow--with the
little adjuncts of a sick-room which had already found their way to the
bedside.  She looked at Mrs. Harrington's face, saw the hard eyes fixed
on Fitz, and something in the glance made her leave the room.

"Just leave me alone," the dying woman said peevishly as Eve went away;
"I don't want a lot of people bothering about."

But Fitz stayed, and when Eve had closed the door the sudden look of
cunning that came over the faded face did not appear to surprise him.

"Quick!" whispered Mrs. Harrington, "quick!  I do not believe I am
dying, as that doctor said I was, but it is better to make sure. Open
the left-hand drawer in the dressing-table; you will find my keys."

Fitz obeyed her, bringing the bunch of keys, rusty and black from being
concealed in a thousand different hiding-places.

"Now," she said, "open that desk; it was--your father's.  Bring it
here.  Be quick!  Some one may come."

Her shrivelled fingers fumbled hastily among some old papers. Finally
she found an envelope, brown with age, on which was written, in her own
spidery handwriting, "Recipe for apple jelly."

She thrust the envelope into Fitz's hands, and he smilingly read the
superscription.

"That's nothing," she explained sharply; "that's only for the servants.
One cannot be too careful.  Inside there is some money. I saved it up.
It will help to furnish your new cabin."

"Thank you," said Fitz, looking critically at the envelope.  "But--"

"You must take it," she interrupted; "it is the only money I ever
saved."  She broke off with a malicious laugh.  "All these fools
thought I was rich," she went on.  "They have been scheming and
plotting to get my money.  There is no money.  That is all there is.
You and Luke were the only two who never thought about it.  You are
both like your father.  Here, shut the desk up again.  Put it back on
the table.  Now hide the keys--left-hand corner, under the box of
hairpins."

Fitz obeyed her and came back towards the bed.  His large mind felt a
sudden contempt for this petty and mean woman.  He did not understand
her, and the contempt he felt for her in some way hurt him.  He was
afraid of what she was going to say next.

"But," she said, "if I get better you must give me the money back."

Fitz gave a little laugh.  Something prompted him to open the envelope
and look at the contents.  There were five notes of ten pounds each.
The rich Mrs. Harrington of Grosvenor Gardens had saved fifty pounds,
and she lay on her death-bed watching Fitz count this vast hoard with a
quiet deliberation.  In its way it was a tragedy--the grimmest of
all--for its dominant note was the contemptibility of human nature.

"I do not want the money.  I should not keep it under any
circumstances."

"What would you do with it?" she asked sharply.

"Give it to a charity."

"No, no, you must not do that; they are all swindles!"

In her eagerness she tried to sit up, and fell back with a puzzled look
on her face, as if some one had struck her.

"Here," she gasped, "give it to me! give it to me!"

She clutched the envelope in her unsteady hands, and suddenly her jaw
dropped.

Fitz ran to the door.  On the stairs were the two doctors, followed
closely by Eve.  In a moment the doctors were at the bedside.

"Yes," said one of them--the younger of the two--and he glanced at his
watch.  "I gave her an hour."

The elder man took the dead woman's hand in his.  He released the
envelope from her grasp and read the superscription, "Recipe for apple
jelly."  With a grave smile he handed the envelope to Eve as Fitz took
her out of the room.

They went downstairs together, and both were thinking of D'Erraha. They
went into the library, which was silent and gloomy.  Fitz had not
spoken yet, but she seemed to understand his silence, just as she had
understood it once before.  She had told him then.  She did not do so
now.

Eve was not thinking of the dead woman upstairs.  This death came to
her only as a faint reflection of the one great grief which had cut her
life in two--as great griefs do.  She was perhaps wondering how it was
that Fitz seemed always to come to her at those moments when she could
not do without him.  She was more probably not thinking at all, but
resting as it were in the sense of complete safety and protection which
this man's presence gave her.

There was a little silence, broken only by the sound of street traffic
faintly heard through the plate-glass windows.  Fitz was looking at
her, his blue eyes grave and searching.  This was not a man to miss his
opportunity, this youngest commander on the list.

"Eve," he said, "I used to think at D'Erraha that you cared for me."

"I have always cared for you," she answered, with a queer little smile,
half bold, half shy.

So Love came in at the windows as Death crept up the stairs.

Before long they heard the doctors go away, but they heeded not. They
only forgot each other when Cipriani de Lloseta came into the room.
The Spaniard's quick eyes read something in Eve's face.  He looked
sharply at Fitz, but he said nothing of what he saw.

"So our dear lady has been taken from us," he said quietly, with an
upward jerk of the head.

Fitz nodded.  Cipriani de Lloseta walked to the window and quietly drew
down the blind.

"So falls the curtain," he said, "on the little drama of my humble
life."

He turned and looked from one to the other with that sudden warmth of
love which either of them seemed able to draw from him.

"Some day," he said, "I will tell you--you two--the story, but not now."

He stepped forward and raised Eve's fingers to his lips.  A quaint,
half-Spanish grace marked the picture of Southern chivalry.

"My child," said Lloseta, "may Heaven always bless you!"  And he left
them.



CHAPTER XI.  "MILKSOP".

     What have we made each other?

The cathedral bells were calling good Papists to their morning devotion
as the Croonah moved into Valetta harbour.  No sooner did her black
prow appear between the pier heads than a score of boats left the
steps, their rowers gesticulating, quarrelling, laughing among
themselves with Maltese vivacity.

One boat, flying the Croonah's houseflag, made its way more leisurely
through the still, clear water.  This boat was bringing mails to the
Croonah, and in the letter-bag Mrs. Harrington's last missive to Luke
had found its place.  This letter had been posted by the well-trained
footman while Eve and Fitz stood at Mrs. Harrington's bedside.  Before
it was stamped at the district office the hand that wrote it was still.
And it contained mischief.  Even after her death Mrs. Harrington
brought trouble to the man whose life she had spoilt by her caprice.
The letter ran--

"DEAR LUKE,--Just a line to tell you that you may bring your
portmanteau straight up to Grosvenor Gardens when your ship arrives in
London.  I read of your fortunate escape from the cyclone, and
congratulate you.  I dare say I shall be having a few friends to stay
when you are with me, so you need not fear dulness.  Yours
affectionately,
                                "MARIAN HARRINGTON.

"P.S.--I always suspect you of having, consciously or unconsciously,
possessed yourself of the affections of a young lady who shall be
nameless.  A word to the wise:  make good use of your opportunities,
for there are other aspirants in the field--a certain brilliant young
naval officer not unknown to you.  Moreover his chance appears to be a
good one.  You must waste no more time."

It happened that Luke FitzHenry was in a dangerous mood when he read
this letter.  He had been up half the night.  The captain had been
cross-grained and unreasonable.  Even the mildest of us has his moments
of clear-sightedness when he sees the world and the hollowness thereof.
Luke saw this and more when he had read Mrs. Harrington's evil
communication.  He seemed to have reached the end of things, when his
present life became no longer tolerable.  It must be remembered that
this man was passionate and very resolute. Moreover he had been
handicapped from the beginning of his life by a tendency to go wrong.
He was not a good subject for ill-fortune.

It was his duty to go ashore with papers to be delivered at the agent's
office.  He delivered his papers and then he went to the cable office.
He telegraphed the single word "Milksop" to Willie Carr in London.
When he got back to the Croonah, worn out, dirty, and morose, the
passengers were not yet astir.  He had an unsatisfactory breakfast, and
went to his cabin for a few hours' necessary sleep.  He had given way
to a great temptation, not as the weak give way, on the spur of the
moment, with hesitation, but as a strong man--strong, even in his
weaknesses.

He did it after mature deliberation--did it thoroughly and carefully,
without the least intention of regretting it afterwards. He was
desperate and driven.  He could not think of life without Agatha, and
he did not see why he should be called upon to do so. Ill fortune had
dogged him from his childhood.  He had borne it all, morosely but
without a murmur.  He was going to turn at last.  The Croonah must go.
She was well insured, he knew that.  That the cargo was fully covered
against loss he could safely suppose.  As to the passengers and the
crew, none of them should suffer; he thought he was a clever enough
sailor for that.

So he laid him down in his little cabin to sleep, while the sun rose
over the blue Mediterranean, while some passengers went ashore and
others came on board, while the single word "Milksop" was spelt over a
continent; and he was still sleeping when the anchor was jerked up from
its muddy bed, and the watchers on pier and harbour looked their last
on the grand old Croonah.

A breeze was blowing out in the open, one of those bright westerly
breezes that bring a breath of the Atlantic into the Mediterranean, and
often make the short passage from Malta to Gibraltar the worst part of
the voyage from India to the Channel.

None of the passengers took any interest in the morose second officer,
and few of them remarked his absence from table during the two days'
passage.  The Croonah arrived at Gibraltar after dark, took her mails
and passengers on board, and proceeded down the Straits about eight
o'clock in the evening.  It was late autumn, and the breeze from the
cool Atlantic still hurried in over the parched lands of Africa and
Southern Europe.

Tarifa light was sighted and left twinkling behind.  Trafalgar stared
out of the darkness ahead, and in its turn was left behind. A few of
the passengers had recovered their Mediterranean ill-usage sufficiently
to dine in the Straits, but the Atlantic swell soon sent them below.
The decks were deserted, for many of these people were returning to
England after long years in India, and the first chill northern breeze
they met made them shiver while it delighted them.

Luke FitzHenry was on the bridge from eight o'clock till midnight,
motionless at his post--a mere navigating machine, respected and feared
by all who worked with him, understood of none.

When midnight came he exchanged a few words with the first officer, and
together they superintended the shaking out of the foresails before the
watch went below.  The wind was on the quarter, strong and steady.
Almost immediately the good steamer felt the canvas, leaning gently
over to leeward, adding another mile to her great speed.  The sea was
black, and the air seemed to be full of the sounds of waves breaking
and hissing.  Ahead the mast-head and the side-lights shone down on the
face of the waters and lighted up an occasional white-capped wave.  In
the air, brisk and masterful, there was a sense of purpose and tension
which sailors understand, while mere printed words cannot convey it to
landsmen.  It was a very dark night.

"St. Vincent," said Luke tersely, as he turned to leave the bridge. The
first officer, a man grown old at his post, followed the direction of
his junior's gaze, but some seconds elapsed before he distinguished the
light twinkling feebly low down on the horizon.

Luke went to his cabin and lay down on his berth all dressed.  He was
due on the bridge again at four o'clock.  The Croonah sailed by
time-table, subjecting the winds and seas, as the great steamships do
nowadays.  Luke FitzHenry had calculated this to a minute before he
telegraphed the single word "Milksop" to Willie Carr in London.

He was on the bridge a few minutes before eight bells rang, and found
the captain.  He knew his chief's customs.  He knew that this wise old
sailor was in the habit of accumulating as much sleep in his brain as
possible before passing Ushant light, because he lived on the bridge
when the Croonah had once turned eastward up the Channel.  Whenever the
captain took a night's rest, he broke it at four o'clock, at the change
of the watch.  He stood muffled in a big coat over his pyjamas, and
exchanged a few words with his subordinates.  After the first officer
had gone below, Luke went to his post at the starboard end of the
bridge, while the captain walked slowly backwards and forwards.  They
remained thus for half an hour.  The ship was all quiet.  The breeze
had fallen a little. There was as yet no sign of daybreak towards the
east.  A steamer passed, showing a red light and a white mast-head
light.

Presently the captain paused in his walk near to Luke.

"Call me," he said, "when you raise the Burling light."

Luke answered with a monosyllable, and the elder sailor went towards
the ladder.

No one had heard the order given.  Luke followed him to the ladder, and
watched him go down into the darkness.  They had sailed together six
years in fair weather and foul; they had fought and conquered a cyclone
in the Bay together from that bridge; but Agatha Ingham-Baker was
stronger than these things.  Woman is the strongest thing in a man's
life.

There was still no sign of daylight, no faintest gleam in the eastern
sky, when the Burling light was sighted right ahead.  The look-out on
the forecastle did not "sing out" the lights on board the Croonah, but
sent a companion aft to the bridge with the report. This was done for
the comfort of the passengers.

Luke altered the course half a point.  From the wheel-house the men
could not see the light, which was hidden by the fore-mast.  Luke went
aft and looked at the patent log.  His calculations were all correct.
He glanced at his watch--he had to go to the wheel-house to do this,
and the binnacle-lights showed his face to be still and pale.  He moved
and had the air of a man upon whose shoulders an immense responsibility
was weighing.  He was going to wreck the Croonah, but he had two
hundred and ninety lives to save.  He carefully studied the eastern
sky.  He did not want daylight yet.

The Burling light is not a very big one--not so big, some mariners
think, as it should be.  It is visible twenty-five miles away; but
Luke's knowledge told him that in thick and misty weather, such as
hovers over this coast in a westerly wind, the glare of the revolving
lamp could not be distinguished at a greater distance than ten or
twelve miles.

The Croonah raced on, a ship full of sleeping human beings.  There came
a faint blue tinge into the eastern sky, a gleam over the eastern sea.

The Burling light--an eye looking round into the darkness, seeming to
open and shut sleepily--grew brighter and brighter.  It was right
ahead! it rose as they approached it until it stood right above the
bowsprit.

Then Luke FitzHenry changed the course.  The Croonah turned her blunt
prow half a point out into the Atlantic, and she raced on; she passed
by Burling Island, leaving the slowly winking eye on her starboard
quarter.  Ahead lay the complete darkness of the north-west horizon.

Luke stood at his post, his eyes hidden by his binoculars.  He was
studying the horizon in front of him--in front of the Croonah. There
was a little lump on the horizon, like the top of a mountain sticking
out of the sea; this he knew to be the rock called the Great Farilhao.
Again he altered the course, still seeking the Atlantic, another
quarter point to the west.  He was going to pass the Great Farilhao as
he had passed the Burling, within a stone's throw.  This he actually
did, the rugged outline of the barren rock standing out sharply against
the eastern sky.  There was now nothing ahead; the horizon lay before
him, clear, unbroken.

Luke moved a few paces.  He went and stood by the engine-room
telegraph.  The engines throbbed merrily, but the steamer was still
asleep.  There was no sound but the thud of the piston-rods and the
whispering swirl of the water lashed by the huge screw.

The Croonah raced on, her sails set, her engines working at full speed.
Suddenly Luke FitzHenry grasped the handle of the engine-room signal.
He wrenched it to one side--"Stand by."  Instantly the gong answered,
"Stand by."  "Half speed ahead."

And half speed ahead it was.  Luke FitzHenry was clever even in his
crime; he had three hundred lives to save.  He stood motionless as a
statue, gazing at the smooth unbroken water in front of him; he grasped
the rail and set his teeth; he stood well back with his feet firmly
planted.  And there was a grinding crash.  The Croonah seemed to climb
up into the air, then she stopped dead, and below--inside her--there
was a long, rumbling crash, as if all that was inside her had been cast
forward in confusion.  She had run on to the sunken rocks that lie
north-west of the Farilhoes.

A great silence followed and immediately the pattering of bare feet. A
confused murmuring of voices rose from the saloon gangway--a buzzing
sound, like that of a hive disturbed.  A single voice rose in a shriek
of mortal terror, and immediately there followed a chorus of confused
shouts.

Luke already had his lips at the speaking-tube.  He was telling the
engineer on watch to steam ahead; he knew the danger of the Croonah
slipping back into deep water and sinking.

In a marvellously short time the decks were thronged with people, some
standing white-faced and calm in the dim light of early morning;
others, mad with terror, rushing from side to side.

The strange part of it was that Luke remained alone on the bridge. The
captain and the other officers were busy with the passengers. The
second officer remained motionless at his post; he commanded the
steersman by a wave of the arm to stay at the wheel, although he knew
that the Croonah would never answer her helm again; her travelling days
were done.

In the dim light now increasing momentarily, Luke FitzHenry looked down
upon the wildly confused decks and saw discipline slowly assert itself.
He saw the captain commanding by sheer force of individual power; he
saw the quartermasters form in line across the deck and drive the
passengers farther aft, leaving room to get out the boats.

In a few moments--in a marvellously short space of time--the work of
saving life began.  A boat was lowered, the crew slipped into their
places, and a certain number of lady passengers were hastily handed
down the gangway.  The first boat eased away.  The oars were thrown
out.  It was off, and some of the passengers cheered.  One can never
tell what men, especially Englishmen, may do when they actually see
death face to face.  The boat was headed to the south-east, towards the
Carreiro do Mosteiro, on Burling Island, the only possible
landing-place.

Luke felt a touch on his arm and turned sharply.  It was a
quartermaster, breathless but cool.

"Captain wants you, sir.  I'll take the bridge."

Luke turned to obey orders.

"Keep her steaming full speed ahead," he said, jerking his head towards
the engine-room telegraph.

"Ay, sir," the man replied.

"Until the water gets to the furnaces," he added to himself, "and then
we're dead men."

Luke ran lightly down the iron ladder to the lower bridge, which was
deserted.  From thence he made his way aft to the quarter-deck.  As he
passed the saloon staircase he ran against two women; one was dragging
the other, or attempting to do so, towards the group of passengers
huddled together amidships.

"You go," the younger woman was saying, "if you want to.  I will wait."

Luke stopped.  The elder woman was apparently wild with terror.  She
had not even stopped to put on a dressing-gown.  Her thin grey hair
fluttered in the breeze.  She was stout and an object of ridicule even
with death clutching at her.

"Go on, mother," said the younger woman, with contempt in her voice.

"Agatha!" cried Luke.  "You here?"

"Yes; we came on board at Malta."



CHAPTER XII.  THE END OF THE "CROONAH".

     Our life is given us as a blank;
     Ourselves must make it blest or curst.

A man came running along and clutched at Luke's arm.

"Captain wants you, sir, immediate!" he cried.

"All right," answered Luke.  "Here, take this lady and put her into a
boat."

Mrs. Ingham-Baker was clinging to him.

"Luke," she said firmly, "you must provide us with a lifeboat--a safe
one.  I will not stand this neglect."

"Here!" cried Luke to the man.  "Take her away."

"You come along o' me, marm," said the man, with a twinkle in his eye.
"I'll pervide ye with a lifeboat, bless yer heart!"

And in the dim light of the saloon stairhead lamp, Luke and Agatha were
left facing each other.

"Why did you not let me know you were coming?" he asked sharply.  He
looked round with haggard eyes; they were quite alone.

"I had no time.  We just caught the boat by an hour."

She was singularly quiet.  Both of them seemed to forget that every
moment lost increased the danger of their position.

"Why did you come?" he asked.

She looked at him, and there was that in her eyes that makes men mad.

"Because I could not stay away from you."

His breath came sharply with a catch.

For a few moments they forgot such things as life and death.  They did
more, they defied death; for surely such love as this is stronger than
the mere end of life.  Again it was the possibility of something good
and something strong that lurked hidden behind the worldliness of
Agatha Ingham-Baker, and Luke FitzHenry, of all men, alone had the
power of bringing that possibility to the surface.

All around them the wind moaned and shrieked through the rigging; the
waves, beating against the sheer side of the doomed Croonah, filled the
air with a sound of great foreboding--the deep voice of an elemental
power that knows no mercy.  Within twenty feet of them men and women
were struggling like dumb and driven animals for bare life--struggling,
shouting, quarrelling over a paltry precedence of a minute or so in
going to the boats; within a hundred yards of them, out over the dark
waters, Agatha's mother, thrown from an overturned boat, was struggling
her last struggle, with her silly old face turned indignantly up to
heaven.  But they saw none of these things.

All the good men were wanted for the boats, and the captain, with two
officers only and a few stewards, defended the gangway against the rush
of the panic-stricken native crew.

"FitzHenry!  FitzHenry!" the old captain shouted.  "For God's sake,
come here!"  For Luke alone was dreaded by the lascars.

But Luke and Agatha heeded nothing.  These people, these lives, were
nothing to them, for a passionate love is the acme of selfishness.

They heard the sounds, however; they heard the captain calling for the
man who had never failed him.

"I wrecked her for you," said Luke, in Agatha's hungry ears.  "I did it
all for you."

And at last the woman's vanity was satisfied; it was thrown a sop that
would suffice for its eternal greed.  Luke had done this thing for her.
She was quick enough to guess how and why, for she knew Willie Carr.
She knew that good ships are thrown away for money's sake.  The Croonah
had been thrown away for her sake--the Croonah, the patient, obedient
servant to Luke's slightest word, almost an animal in its mechanical
intelligence, filling that place in the sailor's heart that some men
reserve for their horses and others for their wives.  Women have been
jealous of a ship before now.  Eve was jealous of the Terrific; Agatha
had always been jealous of the Croonah.  And now the ship had been
thrown away for her, and with his ship Luke had cast away his
unrivalled reputation as a seaman, his honour as a gentleman, his
conscience.  He was a criminal, a thief, a murderer for Agatha's sake.
She, true to her school, to her generation, to her training, was proud
of it; for she was one of those unhappy women who will not have their
lovers love honour more.

There was a sudden roar far down in the bowels of the vessel, and
immediately volumes of steam issued from every skylight.  The inrushing
sea had broken down the bulk-heads, the water had reached the
engine-rooms.  In an instant Luke was alive to the danger--the good
sailor that was within the man all awake.  His trained ears and the
tread of his feet on the deck told him that the screw was still.

"Come," he cried to Agatha, "you must get away in the next boat."

But Agatha resisted his arm.  That which had hitherto been mere
pertness in her manner and carriage had suddenly grown into a strong
determination.  The woman was cool and fearless.

"Not without you," she answered.  "I will not leave the ship until you
do."

"I must stay till the last," he said.

She looked at him with a little smile, for women love courage, though
it sometimes frightens them.  She never dreamt of danger to either of
them.  Her trust in Luke was all-sufficient, without reserve, without
hesitation.

"Then I will stay too."

For a moment his iron nerve--a nerve which had deliberately planned all
this destruction--wavered.

"Why did you not let me know you were coming?" he asked desperately.

"I had no time," she answered, with a singular shortness, for she could
not tell him that a letter from Mrs. Harrington to her mother--the
companion to that received by Luke at Valetta--had brought about this
sudden decision.  She could not tell him that, egged on by a
transparent hint from Mrs. Harrington that Luke was to be her heir, she
and her mother had taken the first boat to Malta; that she had
deliberately planned to marry him for the money that was to be his.
Such a confession was impossible at that time; with his arms still
round her, the mere thought of it nauseated her.  For a moment, she saw
herself as others had seen her--a punishment which for some women is
quite sufficient.

At this moment a man came running along the deck--the same
quartermaster who had taken charge of Mrs. Ingham-Baker.  He was a man
of no nerves whatever, and of considerable humour.

"Any more ladies?" he was shouting as he ran.  "Any more for the shore?"

He laughed at his own conceit as he ran--the same fearless laugh with
which he sent Mrs. Ingham-Baker down the gangway to her death. He
paused, saw Luke and Agatha standing together beneath the lamp.

"Captain's callin' you like hell!" he cried.  "Engine-room's full. The
old ship's got it this time, sir."

"All right, I know," answered Luke curtly; and the man ran on, shouting
as he went.

At this moment the Croonah gave a shiver, and Luke looked round
hastily.  He ran to the rail and looked over with a quick sailor's
glance fore and aft.  He turned towards Agatha again, but before he
could reach her the steamer gave a lurch over to starboard.  The deck
seemed to rise between them.  For a moment Agatha stood above him, then
she half ran, half fell, down the short steep incline into his arms.
Luke was ready for her, with one foot against the rail--for the deck
was at an angle of thirty and more; no one could stand on it.  He
caught her deftly, and the breeze whirling round the deck-house blew
her long hair across his face.

She never changed colour.  There was the nucleus of a good and strong
woman somewhere in Agatha Ingham-Baker.  She clung to her lover's arms
and watched his face with a faith that nothing could shake.  Thus they
stood during three eternal seconds while the Croonah seemed to
hesitate, poised on the brink.  Then the great steamer slowly slid
backwards, turning a little as she did so.

There was a sickening sound of gurgling water.  The Croonah was afloat,
but only for a few seconds.  There was no time to lower another boat,
and all on board knew it.  There were not many remaining, for the
passengers had all left the ship--the stokers, the engineers.
Amidships the captain stood, surrounded by his officers and a few
European sailors--faithful to the end.  They had only one boat left,
and that was forward, half under water--out of the question.  So they
stood and waited for the ship to sink beneath them.

In the distance, on the rough sea, now grey in the light of a sullen
dawn, two boats were approaching, having landed their human freight on
Burling Island.

"Now, my lads," cried the captain, "if any of you are feeling like
going overboard, over you go."

One man slowly took off his coat.  He stooped down and unlaced his
boots, while the others watched him.  It seemed to take him hours. The
bows of the great steamer were almost buried in the broken seas; her
stern was raised high in the air, showing the screw and the rudder.

The man who preferred to swim for it looked round with a strange smile
into the quiet, rough faces of his undismayed companions.  It seemed to
be merely a choice of deaths.

"Well, mates," he said, "so long!"

He dived overboard and swam slowly away.

Luke watched him speculatively.  He knew that had he been alone he
could have saved himself quite easily.  With Agatha his chances were
less certain.  Agatha it was who had spoilt his careful calculation.
Without conceit--for he was a stubbornly self-depreciating man--he knew
that his absence from his captain's side had just made the
difference--the little difference between life and death--to twenty or
thirty people.  Had he been beside the captain and the other officers
the native crew would have worked quietly and intrepidly; there would
have been time for all hands to leave the Croonah before she slipped
back into deep water.

The great steamer rolled slowly from side to side, like a helpless dumb
animal in death agony, but she never righted herself, her decks were
never level.  At length she gave a roll to leeward and failed to
recover herself.  From some air-shaft there came a ceaseless whistle,
deep and sonorous, like the emission of air from the bunghole of a
beer-barrel.  The engines were quite still, even the steam had ceased
to rise.

Luke stood holding Agatha with one arm.  He was watching the two boats
making their way through the choppy sea towards them, and Agatha was
watching his face.

The Croonah was now lying right over on her beam ends.  Luke was
standing on the wire network of the rail.  Suddenly he threw himself
backwards, and as they fell through space Agatha heard the captain's
voice quite distinctly, as from the silence of another world.

"She's going!" he cried.

They struck the water together, Luke undermost, as he had intended.
Agatha shut her eyes and clung to him.  They seemed to go down and
down.  Then suddenly she heard Luke's voice.

"Take a breath," he gasped short and sharp.  His voice was singularly
stern.

With his disengaged hand he put her hair from her face.  She opened her
eyes and saw him smiling at her; she saw a huge piece of wreckage
poised on the edge of a wave over his head; she saw it fall; she felt
the shock of it.

Luke's arm lost its hold; he rolled over feebly in the water, the blood
running down his face, a sudden sense of sleep in his brain. He awoke
again to find himself swimming mechanically, and opened his eyes.
Close to him something white was floating half under water. Spread out
over the surface of the wave Agatha's long hair rose and fell like
seaweed, almost within his grasp.  It was like a horrible nightmare.
He tried to reach it, but his arms were powerless; he could not make an
inch of progress; he could only keep himself afloat.  Agatha's face was
under water.  On the rise of a wave he saw her little bare foot; it was
quite still.  He knew that she was dead, and the blessed sleepiness
took him again, dragging him down.

          .          .          .          .          .

So the last of the Croonah was her good name written large on a yellow
telegram form, nailed to the panel of the room technically known as the
Chamber of Horrors at Lloyd's.

Around this telegram a group of grave-faced men stood in silence, or
with muttered words of surprise.

"The Croonah!" they said, "the Croonah!" as if a pillar of their faith
had fallen.  For once no one had a theory:  no carpet mariner could
explain this thing.

Against the jamb of the window, behind them all, Willie Carr stood
leaning.

"Done anything on her?" some one asked him.

"Yes, bad luck," he answered.  "Had friends on her, too."

It was a long and expansive telegram, giving the list of the lost,
twenty-nine in all, and among the names were mentioned Mrs.
Ingham-Baker and her daughter.

"Ship in charge of second officer," said the telegram.  And lower down,
at the foot of the fatal list:  "Second officer picked up unconscious.
Doing well."

Suddenly Willie Carr moved, and, turning his back somewhat hastily,
looked out of the window.

Fitz had just come into the dreary, fateful little room, conducted
thither by the Admiralty agent.  He read the telegram carefully from
beginning to end.

"Luke on the Burlings!" he muttered, as he turned to go.  "Luke!  I
can't understand it.  He must have been mad!"

And after all Fitz only spoke the truth; but it was a madness to which
we are all subject.



CHAPTER XIII.  AT D'ERRAHA AGAIN.

                    There is no statute so sublime
     As Love's in all the world; and e'en to kiss
     The pedestal is still a better bliss
     Than all ambitions.

Three years later Eve was sitting on the terrace of the Casa d'Erraha.
It was late autumn, and we who live in Northern latitudes do not quite
realise what the autumn of Southern Europe is.  Artists and others
interested in the beauties of nature love a dry summer for the autumn
that is sure to follow it.  In Spain and in the islands of the
Mediterranean every summer is dry, and every autumn is beautiful.

The Casa d'Erraha has not changed in any way--nothing changes in the
Balearics.  The same soft Southern odours creep up from the valley to
battle with the strong resinous scent of the pines that crown the
mountains.

Eve had been a year in D'Erraha--the whole of her married life.  The
Count de Lloseta placed the house at their disposal for the honeymoon.
Fitz and she came to stay a month; they had remained twelve.  It is
often so in Majorca.  A number of Spaniards came six hundred years
ago--nine families; the nine names are there to-day.

Fitz had taken D'Erraha on the Minorcan rotas lease, so the old valley,
the old house, was his.

Eve was not alone on the terrace, for a certain small gentleman, called
Henry Cyprian FitzHenry, a prospective sailor, lay in a pink and
perfect slumber on her lap.  Henry Cyprian fully appreciated the valley
of repose.

Eve was reading a letter--a lamentable scrawl, by the way--obviously
the work of a hand little used to the pen.

"My dearie," the letter ran; and it bore the address--Malabar Cottage,
Somarsh, Suffolk.


"MY DEARIE,--Please thank your good husband for his letter to me
announcing the birth of your son.  I hope the little man is doing well.
Make a sailor of him.  Being one myself I have had opportunity of
noticing seafaring men under different circumstances, and I have never
had an occasion to be ashamed of a shipmate, only excepting when he was
drunk, which is human, so to speak.  Thanking the captain kindly for
his inquiries, I have to advise that all is going well at Malabar
Cottage.  The cottage keeps taut and staunch; and now that my old
shipmate Creary has joined me, we keep to the weather side of the
butcher's bill without any difficulty.  We pull along on a even keel
wonderfully well, Creary being a good-natured man, and as pleasant a
shipmate as one could wish.  He has brought his bits of things with
him, and alongside of mine they make a homely look.  I miss your voice
about the house, and sometimes I feel a bit lonely, but being a rough
seafaring man I know that Malabar Cottage was hardly fit for a lady
like yourself.  The Count de Lloseta has twice been down to see me,
sitting affable down to our bit of lunch with us and making Creary
laugh till he choked.  I don't rightly understand how it was that the
Count and your good husband the captain (R.N.) fixed up my money
affairs, getting so much of it back from Merton's while others haven't
had a halfpenny. I asked the Count to explain, which he did at some
length.  But I didn't rightly understand it, never having had a good
head for figures, though I could always work out my sums near enough to
fix her position on the chart at mid-day.  I take it that Mr. Lloseta
has got a gift for financials, leastwise he pays me my money most
regular, and last time there was two pounds more.  I am sure I ought to
feel thankful that I have such good friends, and people, too, so much
above me.  I understand that the Count de Lloseta is going out to
Majorca this autumn.  He is a good man.--Your affectionate uncle,

                      "WILLIAM JOHN BONTNOR (Master)."

Eve read this effusion with a queer little smile which had no mirth in
it.  She folded the letter carefully and laid it aside for her husband
to see when he returned.  Then she fell into a reverie, looking down
over the great silent valley that lay between her and the sea.  She had
been out into the world and had come back to D'Erraha again.  In the
world she had had a somewhat singular experience.  She had never loved
a woman, she had never known a woman's love.  One man after another had
come into her life, passing across the field of her mental vision when
it was most susceptible to impression, each influencing her life in his
own way, each loving her in his own way, each claiming her love.  Here
was a woman, the mother of a boy, whose every thought had been formed
by men, whose knowledge had been acquired from men, whose world was a
world of men.  She would not have known what to do with a daughter, so
Fate had sent her a son.  From the Caballero Challoner to Fitz, from
Fitz to Captain Bontnor, from Captain Bontnor to John Craik, and from
Craik back to Fitz, this, with Cipriani de Lloseta ever coming and
going, in and out, had been Eve FitzHenry's life.

These men had only taught her to be a woman, as men ever do; but from
them she had acquired the broader way of taking life, the larger way of
thinking, which promised well for Henry Cyprian lying asleep on her lap.

She was thinking of these men, for all they had taught her, of all she
had learnt from them without their knowing it, when one of them came to
her.  Fitz had dismounted in the patio and came walking somewhat
stiffly through to the terrace.  He had been out all day on a distant
part of the D'Erraha property, for he combined the farmer and the
sailor.  He had applied for a year's leave after having served his
country for fifteen.  The year had run into fifteen months, and there
was talk of the time when he should go to sea no longer.

Fitz had changed little.  The cloud, however, that had formerly hung as
it were in his eyes had vanished.  Eve had driven it away, slowly and
surely.  Perhaps Henry Cyprian had something to do in the matter also
by pushing his uncle Luke out of the place he had hitherto occupied in
Fitz's heart.  Luke had voluntarily relinquished the place to a certain
degree.  He had left England three years before to seek his fortune in
other seas, and Fortune had come to him as she often does when she is
sought half-heartedly.  Luke commanded one of the finest war-ships
afloat, but she sailed under the Chilean flag.

"Letters," said Fitz.

Eve smiled and handed him Captain Bontnor's epistle.  She watched his
face as he read--she had a trick of watching her husband's face. This
was a hopelessly taciturn man, but Eve seemed to understand him.

There was another letter unopened and addressed to Fitz.  He took it up
and opened it leisurely, after the manner of one who has all he wants
and looks for nothing by post.

Eve saw his face brighten with surprise.  He read the letter through,
and then he handed it to her.

"Lloseta," he said, "is coming.  He is in Barcelona."

Eve read the letter.  She leant back in her deep chair with a
pensiveness, a faint suggestion of weariness bespeaking the end of a
convalescence, which was perhaps climatic.

"I have never understood the Count," she said.  "There are so many
people one does not understand."

She broke off with a little laugh, half impatient.

"Yes," said her husband quietly.  "Whom are you thinking of?"

"Agatha."

Fitz was gazing at the fine quartz gravel beneath his feet.

"Agatha cared for Luke," he said.

A faint flicker of anxiety passed across Eve's eyes--the mention of
Luke's name always brought it.  She had never seen this twin
brother--this shadow as it were of Fitz's life--and it had been slowly
borne in upon her--perhaps Henry Cyprian had taught her--that there is
a tie between twins which no man can gauge nor tell whither it may lead.

"Yes," she said quietly, "I know."

"How do you know?  Did she tell you?"

Eve smiled.

"No; but I knew long ago.  I do not think she was good, Fitz, but that
was good in her--quite good.  People say that it sometimes saves men.
It often saves women.  I think it is better for a girl to have no
mother at all than to have a foolish mother, much better, I am sure of
it."

"Women like Mrs. Ingham-Baker," said Fitz gruffly, "do more harm in the
world than women who are merely bad.  She made Agatha what she was, and
Agatha made Luke throw away the Croonah."

"But the Court decided that it was an unusual current," said Eve, who
had followed every word of the official inquiry.

Fitz shrugged his shoulders.

"He threw the ship away," he said.  "Sailors like Luke do not get
wrecked on the Burlings."

Eve did not pursue the subject, for this was the shadow on her
happiness.  It has been ruled that we are not to be quite happy here,
and those are happiest who have a shadow that comes from outside--from
elsewhere than from themselves or their own love.

Eve, womanlike, had thought of these things, analysing them as women
do, and she recognised the shadow frankly.  She was too intelligent,
too far-sighted to expect perfect bliss, but she knew that she had as
near an approach to it as is offered for human delectation, neutralised
as it was by that vague regret which is only the reflection of the
active sorrows of others.

Fitz had handed the Count's letter to his wife.  She read it slowly and
allowed it to drop.  As it fluttered to her lap she caught sight of
some writing on the back.

"Did you see the postscript?" she asked.

"No."

She turned the letter and read aloud.

"I saw Craik just before I left.  He was, I think, in better health.
His mind is much too brilliant, his brain too active, his humour too
keen to be that of a sick man.  When I told him your good news he quite
forgot to be rheumatic.  'Glad to hear it, glad to hear it,' he said.
'She was much too good to be a mere writing woman.'  By the way, I
imagine Eve never learnt that all the Spanish articles, except the
first, passed through my hands as well as Craik's before publication.
I knew who wrote them, and am still one of their profoundest admirers,
but, like John Craik, I am well content that the gifted author should
turn her attention to other things, notably to my godson, to whom
salutations.  Did either of you ever meet young Lord Seahampton, an
excellent fellow, with the appearance of a cleanly groom and the heart
of a true knight?  He was killed while riding a steeplechase last week.
I regret him deeply.  He was one of my few friends."

Eve laid the letter down with a little sigh, a species of sigh which
she reserved for Cipriani de Lloseta.

"He is a nineteenth-century Quixote," she said.  "No one ever knows
what good he may be doing."

Then they fell to talking of this man, of what he had done and what he
had left undone.  They guessed at what he had suffered, and of the
suffering which he had spared others they knew a little; but of his own
feelings they were ignorant, his motives they only knew in part.  His
life had been lived out to a certain extent before them, but they knew
nothing of it; it was a mere superficies without perspective, and Eve,
woman-like, wanted to put a background to it.

"But why," she persisted, from the height of her own happiness, which
had apparently been so easy to reach, "why does he lead such a lonely,
gloomy life?  Why has he so few friends?  Why does he not come and live
at Lloseta instead of in the gloomy palace in the Calle de la Paz?"

"His life is all whys," answered Fitz; "it is one big note of
interrogation.  He said that some day he would tell us; no doubt he
will."

"Yes; perhaps so."

Eve reflected, and again she indulged in a short sigh.

"And after he has told us there will be nothing to be done, that is the
worst of it; there will be nothing to be done, Fitz."

"There never has been anything to be done," replied Fitz slowly, as was
his wont.  "That has been the keynote of his life as long as I have
known him.  If there had been anything to do, you may be sure that De
Lloseta would have done it."

Eve was bending over the small beginnings of a man lying supine on her
knees.  She drew Henry Cyprian's wraps closer around him preparatory to
taking him indoors.

"Then his is surely the saddest life imaginable," she said.



CHAPTER XIV.  THE COUNT'S STORY.

                    And yet I know
     That tears lie deep in all I do.

The pine forests on the mountain-tops were beginning to gather the
darkness as the Count de Lloseta rode up the last slope to the Casa
d'Erraha.  The sun had just set behind the rocky land that hides
Miramar from D'Erraha.  A stillness seemed to be creeping down from the
mountain to the valley.  The wind had gone down with the sun.

The Count rode alone beneath the gloom of the maritime pines which grow
to their finest European stature on the northern slope of D'Erraha.  He
had been in the saddle all day; but Cipriani de Lloseta was a Spaniard,
and a Spaniard is a different man when he has thrown his leg across a
horse.  The suave indolence of manner seems to vanish, the courtly
indifference, the sloth and contemplativeness which stand as a bar
between our northern nature and the peninsular habit.  De Lloseta was a
fine horseman--even in Spain, the nation of finest horsemen in the
world; also he was on Majorcan soil again.  He had landed at Palma that
morning from the Barcelona steamer, and he had found Fitz awaiting him
with a servant and a led horse on the quay.

There was a strangely excited gleam in De Lloseta's dark eyes which
Fitz did not fail to notice.  The Count looked around over the dark
wild faces of his countrymen and met no glance of recognition, for he
had been absent forty years.  Then he raised his eyes to the old city
towering on the hillside above them, the city that has not changed
these six hundred years, and he smiled a wan smile.

"I have brought a horse for you," said Fitz, "either to ride back to
D'Erraha with me now or to take you to Lloseta, should you care to go
direct there.  Eve has packed up some lunch for you in the saddle-bag
if you think of going to Lloseta first."

The Count nodded.

"Yes," he said, "that is like Eve; she would think of such things."

He went up to the horse, patted it, measured the length of the
stirrup-leather, and then turned to Fitz.

"I will go to Lloseta," he said.  "It is only natural after forty
years.  I will be with you by seven o'clock to-night at D'Erraha."

Fitz did not offer to accompany him, and Cipriani de Lloseta rode that
strange ride alone; unknown, an outcast in his own land, he rode
through the most fertile valley in the world, of which every tree was
dear to him; and no man knew his thoughts.  The labourers in the
fields, men and women, brown, sunburnt, half Moorish, wholly simple and
natural, paused in their toil and looked wonderingly at the lonely
horseman; the patient mules walking their ceaseless round at the
Moorish wells blinked lazily at him; the eagles of Lloseta swept slowly
round in a great circle far above the old castle, as they had swept in
his childhood, and he looked up at them with his strange patient smile.
He pushed the great olive-wood gate open and passed into the terraced
garden, all overgrown, neglected, mournful. It was a strange
home-coming, with no one near to see.

He spent the whole day at Lloseta engaged in the very practical work of
employing men to labour at the garden and in the house.  It was, he
said, his intention to come back to his "possession," as these Majorcan
country houses are called, to inhabit it the larger part of the year,
and to pass the remaining winter months at his palace in Palma.

In the afternoon he mounted his horse, and in the evening, as has been
said, he reached D'Erraha.

A servant must have been watching his approach, for the large door was
thrown open and he rode into the patio.  Fitz was here to welcome him;
and behind him Eve, with Henry Cyprian in her arms.  No one spoke.  It
was rather singular.  The Count dismounted.  He took off his hat and
held it in the Spanish mode in his hand while he shook hands with Fitz
and Eve.  He looked round the patio.  He noted the old marble well,
yellow with stupendous age, the orange trees clustering over it, the
palms and the banana trees, then he smiled at Eve.

"After many years," he said.

There was a little pause.

"I should have wished to see your father," he said, "amidst these
surroundings."

Eve gave a little nod.  From long association with men she had learnt a
manlike reticence.  She moved a little towards the open archway leading
through to the terrace.

"We have some tea," she said, "waiting for you.  Will you come to the
terrace?"

He followed her, while the servant led the tired horse away.

They sat at the northern end of the terrace, where the garden-chairs
always stood, and before, beneath, all around them rose and fell the
finest of all the fine Majorcan scenery--scenery which only Sardinia
can rival in Europe.

Eve poured out his tea, which he drank, and set the cup aside.

They all knew that the time had come for the Count de Lloseta to tell
his story--to redeem the promise made to Eve and Fitz long ago, before
they were married.

Cipriani de Lloseta leant back in his deep garden-chair nursing one
booted leg over the other.  He was dusty and travel-stained, but the
natural hardiness of his frame seemed to be more apparent than ever in
his native land, on his native mountains.

"My poor little tale," he said; "you will have it?"

"Yes," said Eve; and Fitz nodded.

Cipriani de Lloseta did not look at them, but down into the gathering
blue of the valley beneath them.  His quiet, patient eyes never turned
elsewhere during his narrative, as if he were telling the story to the
valley and the hills.

"When I was quite a young man everything was too prosperous with me. I
was rich, I had health and liberty and many friends; life was
altogether too simple and easy for me.  Before I was twenty-one I met
my dear Rosa and fell in love with her.  Here again it was too easy,
too convenient.  Fate is cruellest when she is too kind.  The parents
wished it.  The two families were equally old, equally rich; and lastly
Rosa--Rosa was kind enough to be--kind to me."

He paused, pensively rubbing his clean-shaven chin with his forefinger,
his long profile was turned towards Eve, standing out like brown marble
against the gloom of the valley.  Eve wondered about this woman, this
Rosa, who had been forty years in her grave. She wondered what manner
of woman this must have been to have kept the love of a man through all
these years by a mere memory, but she did not wonder that Rosa had been
kind.

"She saw things in me that do not exist," Cipriani de Lloseta went on
quietly.  "It is so with women when--and men may thank God that it is
so."

He gave a little laugh, unpleasant to the ear--the laugh of a man who
has been right down to the bottom of life and comes up again with a
sneer.

Eve and Fitz made no sign.  This story was like wine that has lain
forgotten in the dark for many years, it needed careful handling. Henry
Cyprian turned on his silken cushion, and opening his great dark eyes
watched the speaker with that infantine steadfastness of gaze which may
perchance see more than we suspect.

"We were married"--he paused and gave a jerk of the head towards Palma,
behind him to the left--"in the cathedral, and were quite happy.  At
that time the Harringtons were living, or rather staying, in this house
with your good father.  Neither of you ever saw the Honourable George
Harrington; your loss is infinitesimal.  For some reason they began to
come to Lloseta a good deal--some reason of Mrs. Harrington's.  She was
always a singular woman, with a reason for all that she did, which I,
in my old-fashioned way, do not think good in a woman.  She disliked my
wife.  I could see that through her affectionate ways.  I do not know
why.  Men cannot understand these things.  Rosa was very beautiful."

Eve, who was watching his face, gave a little nod--a mental nod, as it
were, for her own edification.  It is possible that she, being a woman,
understood.

"Finally they came to stay a few days--you know the Spanish
hospitality.  She forced it on us against our will.  I was particularly
averse to it because of--Rosa.  I wanted to be quietly at Lloseta.  We
intended to live almost entirely in Majorca.  We wanted our children to
be Majorcans, and especially a son.  The Harringtons stayed longer than
we invited them for.  They were well-bred adventurers.  I have met many
such in English country houses--people who shoot, and fish, and hunt at
the expense of others.  It suited them to stay at Lloseta, and they did
so.  They were people who got the best of everything by asking for
it--by looking upon it in a well-bred way as their right.  I did not
mind that, but I wanted them to go, on account of Rosa.  Also I
disliked the woman's manner towards myself; it altered when Rosa was
not there, you understand.  We have a word for it in Spain, but I will
not say it because the woman is dead."

There was a rasping sound as he drew his first and second fingers
across his closely shaven chin.  It is a singular thing that cynics
usually reserve their keenest shafts for women.

"At last I informed Rosa that they must be told to go, and Rosa was
very angry.  It was her pride--the pride of a new-fledged hostess, of a
young matron.  She was Spanish, and hot tempered.  My inhospitality was
terrible to her, and she spoke sharply.  I was quicker to feel and to
act then than I am now.  I answered her.  I would not give way,
thinking, as I was, of the son we hoped for.  It was nothing, but we
raised our voices.  In the heat of the argument I lifted my hand.  Rosa
thought that I was going to strike her--a strange mistake.  She stepped
back and fell.  You know our marble floors.  She struck her temple
against the floor, and she lay quite still.  I heard a sound, and
turning, saw Mrs. Harrington in the doorway.  She had been listening;
she had seen everything.  Rosa never recovered consciousness; she died.
It was terribly easy for her to die.  It was equally hard for me to
continue living.  Mrs. Harrington helped me in my great sorrow to a
certain extent, but she would not help me by going away.  Then, as soon
as Rosa was buried, she told me that unless I gave her money she would
tell all Spain that I had murdered my wife.  At first I did not
understand.  I did not know that God had created women such as this.
But she made her meaning quite clear.  Indeed to do this thoroughly,
she hinted to the neighbours that she knew more than she had disclosed.
All Majorca would turn its back upon me--all except Challoner.  I paid
the woman.  I have paid her ever since, and I do not regret it. What
else could I do?  After many generations of honour and uprightness I
could not let the name of Lloseta fall into the hands of a low woman
such as Mrs. Harrington.  I had to pay heavily, but it was still cheap.
I saved the name.  No breath of dishonour has reached the name of De
Lloseta de Mallorca.  I got her out of Majorca, and my old friend
Challoner set himself the task of silencing the gossips.  But I found
that I had to leave Lloseta--for the name's sake I quitted my home."

He spread out his hands with a patient gesture of resignation.

"Such has been my life," he went on.  "It has been spent in preserving
the name unspotted, in paying Mrs. Harrington, and in praying the good
God to make her life unhappy and short.  In His greater wisdom He
prolonged her life, but it was never a happy one, for God is just.  I
am the last of the Llosetas.  The name will die, but it has lived for
six hundred years, and it dies as it lived--unspotted--one of the great
names of the world."

He broke off with a little laugh.

"Spanish pride," he said.  "I must beg your indulgence.  My life you
know.  It has not been a happy one.  I have never forgotten Rosa; I
have never even tried.  I have had several objects however in life; it
has not been uninteresting.  One of the chief of these objects has been
to repay to a minute extent the true friendship of my dear Challoner.
He was a friend in need.  He taught me to look upon the English as the
finest race of men on this planet.  I may be wrong, but I shall adhere
to my opinion.  In my small way I attempted to repay in part to
Challoner's daughter all that I owed to him; but I only ran against a
pride as strong, as sensitive as my own.  My child, you did quite
right!"

He turned to Eve, smiling his patient smile.

"And now," he went on, "I shall have my way after all."

He laid his hand on Henry Cyprian, who was conscientiously putting the
Valley of Repose to its best use.

"After all, this little caballero was born at D'Erraha.  D'Erraha is
his; is it not so?"

And Eve, giving up her pride to him--casting it down before his loftier
pride--came round to his chair, and bending over, kissed him silently.





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Grey Lady" ***

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