"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.