Fitz paused. The Count had been kind to Eve. Fitz had noticed his manner towards the girl. He liked Cipriani de Lloseta—as many did- -without knowing why.

"Thanks," he said, "I should like to."

The Count's club was a small and a very select one. It was a club with a literary tendency. The porter who took charge of their coats had the air of a person who read the heavier monthly reviews. He looked upon Fitz, as a man of outdoor tastes, with some misgiving.

The Count led the way up to the luxurious silent smoking-room, where a few foreign novels and a host of newspapers littered the tables.

As they entered the room a man looked up from his paper with some interest. He was a peculiar-looking man, with a keen face, streaked by suffering—a face that was always ready to wince. This man was a humorist, but he looked as if his own life had been a tragedy. He continued to look at De Lloseta and Fitz with a quiet scrutiny which was somewhat remarkable. It suggested the scrutiny of a woman who is taking notes of another's dress.

More particularly perhaps he watched the Count, and the keen eyes had a reflective look, as if they were handing that which they saw, back to the brain behind them for purpose of storage.

The Count met his eyes and nodded gravely. With a little nod and a sudden pleasant smile the other returned to the perusal of his evening paper.

Cipriani de Lloseta drew forward a deep chair, and with a courteous gesture invited Fitz to be seated. He took a similar chair himself, and then leant forward, cigar-case in hand.

"You know Mallorca," he said.

Fitz took a cigar.

"Yes," he answered, turning and looking into the Count's face with a certain honest interest. He was thinking of what Eve had said about this man. "Yes—I know Mallorca."

The Count struck a match and lighted his cigar with the air of a connoisseur.

"I am always glad," he said conversationally, "to meet any one who knows Mallorca. It—was my home. Perhaps you knew?"

And through the blue smoke the quick dark eyes flashed a glance.

"I saw your name—on the map," returned Fitz.

The Count gave a little Spanish deprecatory nod and wave of the hand, indicating that it was no fault of his that an historical name should have attached itself to him.

"Do you take whisky—and soda?" inquired the Count.

"Thanks."

De Lloseta called the waiter and gave the order with a slight touch of imperiousness which was one of the few attributes that stamped him as a Spaniard. The feudal taint was still running in his veins.

"Tell me," he went on, turning to Fitz again, "what you know of the island—what parts of it—and what you did there."

In some ways Fitz was rather a simple person.

"Oh!" he answered unconsciously. "I went to D'Erraha mostly. I used to sail across from Ciudadela to Soller—along the coast, you know."

"And from Soller?"

"From Soller I rode by the Valdemosa road, and then across the mountain and through that narrow valley up to the Val d'Erraha."

The Count was smoking thoughtfully.

"And you were happy there?" he said.

Fitz looked pensively into his long tumbler.

"Yes."

"I also," said the Count. Then he seemed to remember his duties as host. "Is that cigar all right?" he asked.

"I think it is the best I have ever smoked," replied Fitz quietly; and the Count smiled.

The two men sat there in a long silence—each thinking his own thoughts. They were just the sort of men to do it. No other but Cipriani de Lloseta would have sat with that perfect composure, wrapt in an impenetrable Spanish silence, providing with grave dignity such a very poor evening's entertainment. And Fitz seemed quite content. He leant back, gravely smoking the good cigar. There seemed to be some point of complete sympathy between them— possibly the little sunlit island of the Mediterranean where they had both been happy.

The poem of a man's life is very deeply hidden, and civilisation is the covert. The immediate outcome of civilisation is reserve and— nous voila. Are we not increasing our educational facilities with a blind insistence day by day? One wonders what three generations of cheap education will do for the world. Already a middle-aged man can note the slackening of the human tie. Railway directors, and other persons whose pockets benefit by the advance of civilisation, talk a vast deal of rubbish about bringing together the peoples of the world. You can connect them, but you cannot bring them together. Moreover, a connection is sometimes a point of divergence. In human affairs it is more often so than otherwise.

True, a generation lay between these two men, but it was not that that tied their tongues. It was partially the fact that Cipriani de Lloseta had moved with the times—had learnt, perhaps, too well, to acquire that reserve which is daily becoming more noticeable among men.

Nevertheless, it was he who spoke first.

"I asked you to come and smoke a cigar with me for a purpose," he said.

Fitz nodded.

"Yes," he answered; "I thought so."

A shadowy smile acknowledged this simple statement of a simple fact. The Count leant forward on his seat, resting his somewhat hollow cheek on his hand and his elbow on the arm of his chair.

"Some years ago," he said, "before you were born, I passed through a—well, a bad time. One of those times, I take it, when a man finds out the difference between a friend and an acquaintance. The circumstances would not interest you. They are essentially personal. Some men, and many women—I am not cynical, that is the last resource of one who has himself to blame, I am merely stating a fact—many women turned their backs upon me. There was, however, one man—an Englishman—who held to me with that unflinching courage of his own opinion which makes an Englishman what he is. I accepted nothing from him at the time. In fact, he could do nothing for me. I think he understood. An Englishman and a Spaniard have much in common. He is dead now. It was Challoner."

Fitz nodded. The Count changed his position slightly.

"I want you to use what influence you have with Miss Challoner. She is proud."

Fitz made no attempt to disclaim the implied influence.

"Yes," he said; "I know."

And he looked at the end of his cigar with a deep interest. The man who loves a proud woman loves her pride. He is also a happy man, because her pride will kill her vanity, and it is a woman's vanity that spoils a husband's love.

"It would be a great satisfaction to me," the Count went on, "to pay off in some small degree the debt of gratitude which I never even acknowledged to Challoner. Eve"—he paused, and repeated the name with a certain sense of enjoyment—"Eve is not fully equipped with worldly wisdom. Thank God, for I hate a worldly-wise woman. She is hardly old enough or—plain enough to fight her own battles."

Fitz gave a sudden, sharp sigh, which made the Count pause for a moment.

"You also have received kindness from Challoner," went on the elder man, after a short silence.

Fitz nodded comprehensively.

"And, like myself," the Count continued, rather quickly, "you are naturally interested in his daughter, and sorry for her in her great change of circumstances. Now, it has occurred to me that together we might do something towards helping her. You know her better than I do. I only know that she is proud."

"Very much to her credit," put in Fitz, looking fixedly at his own boots.

"Entirely so. And I respect her for it. Unfortunately, assistance could hardly come from you—a young man. Whereas, I might be her grandfather."

He looked up with a smile—keen, black-haired, lithe of frame—a young man in appearance.

"We might help each other," he added, "you and I, quite alone. Captain Bontnor is a very worthy old fellow, but—" and he shrugged his shoulders. "We cannot leave her to the wayward charity of a capricious woman!" he added, with sudden bluntness.

He looked rather wonderingly at Fitz, who did not respond to this suggestion, as he had expected him to do. The coalition seemed so natural and so eminently practical, and yet the sailor sat coldly listening to each proposition as it fell from his companion's lips, weighing it, sifting it with a judicial, indifferent apathy.

The Count de Lloseta threw himself back in his chair, and awaited, with all the gravity of his race, the pleasure of his companion. At length Fitz spoke, rather deliberately.

"I think," he said, "you mistake the footing upon which I stand with respect to Miss Challoner. I shall be most happy to do all in my power; but I tell you frankly that it does not amount to much. I am indebted to her indirectly for some very pleasant visits to D'Erraha; her father was very kind to me. Hardly sufficient to warrant anything that would look like interference on my part."

The Count was too discreet a man to press the point any further.

"All this unfortunate difficulty would have been easily averted had I been less stupid. I shall never cease to regret it."

He spoke conversationally, flicking the end of his cigar neatly into the fire, and without looking at Fitz.

"I never foresaw the natural tendency of lawyers to complicate the affairs of life. My man in Palma was unfortunately zealous."

Fitz nodded.

"Yes," he said, "I was there."

Cipriani de Lloseta glanced at him sharply.

"I am glad of that," he said. "It was very stupid of me. I ought to have telegraphed to him to hold his tongue."

"But Miss Challoner could not have accepted the Val d'Erraha as a present?"

"Oh yes, she could, if she had not known. These little things are only a matter of sentiment."

Fitz leant forward, looking into the Count's face without attempting to conceal his surprise.

"Do you mean to say you would have given it to her?" he asked.

"No; I should have paid it to her in settlement of a debt which I owed to her father."

The Count moved rather uneasily in his chair. His eyes fell before his companion's steady gaze.

"Another matter of sentiment," suggested Fitz.

De Lloseta shrugged his shoulders.

"If you will."

They lapsed into silence again. The Count was puzzled by Fitz, as Fitz in his turn had been puzzled earlier in the evening by Eve. It was merely the old story of woman the incomprehensible, and man the superior—the lord of the universe—puzzled, completely mystified, made supremely miserable or quite happy by her caprice of a moment.

It was a small thing that stood between these two men, preventing them from frankly co-operating in the scheme which both had at heart. It was nothing but the tone of a girl's voice, the studied silence of a girl's eyes, which had once been eloquent.

It was getting late. A discreet clock on the mantelpiece declared the hour of midnight in deliberate cathedral chime. Fitz looked up, but he did not move. He liked Cipriani de Lloseta. He had been prepared to do so, and now he had gone further than he had intended. He wanted him to go on talking about Eve, for he thirsted in his dumbly enduring way for more details of her life. But he would not revert to the subject. Rather than that he would go on enduring.

While they were sitting thus in silence, the only other occupant of the room—the man with the pain-drawn face—rose from his seat, helping his legs with unsteady hands upon either arm of the chair. He threw the paper down carelessly on the table, and came across the room towards the Count de Lloseta. He was a surprisingly tall man when he stood up; for in his chair he seemed to sink into himself. His hair was grey—rather long and straggly—his eyes hazel, looking through spectacles wildly. His cheeks were very hollow, his chin square and bony. Here was a man of keen nerves and quick to suffer.

"Well," he said to Lloseta, "I haven't seen you for some time."

"I've been away."

The tall man looked down at him with the singular scrutiny already mentioned.

"Spain?"

"Spain."

He turned away with a little nod, but stopped before he had gone many paces.

"And when are you going to write those sketches of Spanish life?" he asked, with a cheery society laugh, which sounded rather incongruous. "Never, I suppose. Well, the loss is mine. Good- night, Lloseta."

He went away without looking back.

"Do you know who that is?" the Count asked Fitz when the door was closed.

Fitz had risen, with his eye on the clock.

"No. But I seem to know his face."

The Count looked up with a smile.

"You ought to. That was John Craik."



CHAPTER XVI. BROKEN.

The Powers Behind the world that make our griefs our gains.

The small town of Somarsh, in Suffolk, consists of one street running up from the so-called harbour. At one end is the railway- station; at the other the harbour and the sea, and that is Somarsh. There are records that in days gone by—in the days of east coast prosperity—there was a Mayor of Somarsh, or Southmarsh, as it was then written. But Ichabod!

All Somarsh was in the street one morning after Fitz had gone to sea again, and those of the women who were not talking loudly were weeping softly. The boats were not in yet, but the weather was fine, and the still, saffron sea was dotted with brown sails. There was nothing wrong with the boats.

No; the trouble was on shore, as it mostly is. It came not from the sea, but from men. It was pinned upon the door of Merton's Bank in the High Street. Its form was unintelligible, for the wording of the notice was mostly outside the Suffolk vocabulary. There was something written in a clerkly hand about the withdrawal of "financial facilities necessitating a stoppage of payment pending reconstruction."

But the people in the street were saying that Merton's was "broke." The constable said so, and he was a recognised authority on matters pertaining to dry land and the law. The door was locked on the inside, the shutters were up, the blinds down, as if mourning the death of a good East county credit.

"And them a drivin' behind their two horses," said one old weather- beaten fisherman, who was suspected of voting on the wrong side at electioneering time.

Some shook their heads, but the word went no farther, for the man who does his business on the great waters has a vast respect for ancient institutions. And Merton's had been a good bank for many generations.

"P'raps," said an old woman who had nothing to lose—for the sea had even kept her corpses from her—"p'raps what they say 'bout reconstruction may be all right. But here comes the capt'n."

The crowd turned like one man and watched the advent of Captain Bontnor.

The old man was dressed in his best pilot cloth suit. He had worn it quite recklessly for the last month, ever since Eve had come to live with him. He had been interrupted in his morning walk—his quarter-deck tramp—forty times the length of his own railing in front of Malabar Cottage. The postman bringing letters for Eve, had told him that there was trouble down in the town, and that he would likely be wanted.

When he saw where the crowd was stationed he caught his breath.

"No," he said aloud to himself, "no, it can't be Merton's."

And when he joined the townspeople they saw that his sunburnt, rugged face was grey as ashes.

"Mates," he said, "what is it?"

"Merton's is broke—Merton's is broke!" they answered, clearing a way for him to read the notice for himself. In Somarsh Captain Bontnor was considered quite a scholar. As such he might, perhaps, have deciphered the clerkly handwriting in a shorter time than he now required, but on the east coast a reputation is not easily shaken.

They waited for the verdict in silence. After five minutes he turned round and his face gave some of them a shock. His kindly blue eyes had a painfully puzzled, incompetent look, which had often come across them in Barcelona and in London. But in Somarsh only Eve was familiar with it.

"Yes, mates," he said, falling back into his old seafaring vernacular, forgetful of his best suit, "yes, shipmates, as far as I rightly understand it, the bank's broken. And—and there's some of us that's ruined men."

He stood for a moment looking straight in front of him—looking very old and not quite fit for life's battle. Then he moved away.

"I'll just go and tell my niece," he said.

They watched him stump away—sturdy, unbroken, upright—still a man.

"It's a hard end to a hard life," said the old woman who had suggested hope; and being only human, they fell to discussing the event from the point at which it affected their own lives.

Malabar Cottage stood at the top end of the High Street—almost by itself—looking out over the little green plot of common land, where the coastguard flagpost stands towards the sea. It was a low- roofed, solidly built cottage—once a coastguard station, but superseded in the heyday of east coast smuggling by a larger station further up the hill. There was a little garden in front, which the captain kept himself, growing such old-fashioned flowers as were content with his ignorant handling. The white jasmine ran riot over the portico.

Eve had apparently received a letter of some importance, for she was standing at the gate waiting for him. She ran out hatless to see him on his quarter-deck, and to her surprise found him not. She soon saw him coming, however, and to beguile the time fell to reading her letter a second time, with a little frown, as if the caligraphy gave her trouble.

She did not look up until he was quite close.

"Uncle," she cried, "what is the matter?"

He gave a smile, which was painfully out of place on his bluff features—it was wan and twisted.

"Nothing, my dearie; nothing."

He fumbled at the gate, and she had to find the latch for him.

"Just come below—I mean indoors, my dear. I've had some news. I dare say it will be all right—but just at first, you understand, it is a little—keen."

He bustled through the porch, and Eve followed him. She watched him hang up his old straw hat, standing on tiptoe with a grunt, as was his wont.

"I must unship that peg and put it a bit lower," he said, as he had said a hundred times before.

Then he went into the little dining-room and sat somewhat heavily down, with his two hands resting on his knees. He looked puzzled.

"Truth is, my dear," he said breathlessly, "I don't seem to take to this long-shore life. I—I rather think of going back to sea. There's plenty will give me a ship. And I want you to keep this cottage nice for me, dearie, against my coming home."

He paused, looking round the room with a poor simulation of interest at the quaint ornaments and curiosities which he had brought home from different parts of the world. He looked at the ceiling and the carpet—anywhere, in fact, except at Eve. Then he pushed his fingers through his thick grey hair, making it stand on end in a ludicrous manner.

"I've got all my bits of things collected here—just bits of things- -oh, dear!—oh, dear—Eve, my child, I wonder why the Almighty's gone and done this?"

Eve was already sitting on the arm of his chair, stroking back his hair with her tender fingers.

"What is it, uncle?" she asked. "Tell me."

"Merton's," he answered. "Merton's, and them so safe!"

"Is it only money?" cried Eve. "Is that all?"

"Yes," he answered rather wearily, "that's all. But it's money that's took me fifty-five years to make."

"And had you it all in Merton's Bank?"

"Yes, dearie, all."

"But are you sure they have failed—that there is no mistake?"

"Quite sure. I've read it myself pinned on the door, and the shutters up, like a thing you read of in the newspapers. No, it's right. There's not often a mistake about bad news."

Eve bent over him very tenderly and kissed him. He was holding her hand between his, patting it gently with his rough, weather-beaten fingers. He was looking straight in front of him with that painful look of helplessness which had earned him the friendship of Lord Seahampton in Barcelona.

"But," said the girl at length, "you cannot go to sea again."

She knew that he would never get a ship, for his seamanship, like all other things that were his, was hopelessly superannuated. He was not fit to be trusted with a ship—no owner would dream of it, no crew would sail under him.

"There's men," said the captain humbly, "who learnt their seamanship from me—who sailed under me—p'raps one of them would give me a berth as first mate or even second mate under him—for a shipmate they would do it."

Captain Bontnor had fallen behind the times even in his sentiments. He did not know that in these days of short voyages, of Seamen's Unions, and Firemen's Friendlies and Stokers' Guilds, a shipmate is no longer a special friend—the tie is broken, as are many other ties, by the advance of education.

Then the old man pulled himself together, and smiled bravely at his niece.

"It is not for myself that I'm worrying," he said, "but for you. I don't quite see my way clear yet. It's sort of sharp and sudden. I cannot get the poor Mertons out of my head—people that have been accustomed to their carriages and all. It's hard for them! You see, what they say is that their financial facilities have been withdrawn, and I dare say nobody is to blame. It is just what they call the hand of God, in a bill of lading—just the hand of God."

"Yes, dear," answered Eve. "And now I am going to serve out a glass of sherry; you want it after your quick walk. That is what you did at sea, you served it out, did you not?"

"He, he! yes, dearie; that is it."

His rugged hand shook as he drank the wine.

"Only," he went on, after wiping his moustache vigorously with a red pocket-handkerchief—"only it was rum, dearie—rum, you know, for heavy weather. It puts heart into the men."

His face suddenly clouded over again.

"And we've run into heavy weather, haven't we? Just the hand of God."

"Finish the glass," said Eve, and she stood over him while he drank the wine.

"And now," she went on, "listen to me. I have had a very important letter, which could hardly have come at a more opportune moment. In fact, I think we may call it also . . . what they say in a bill of lading."

She opened the letter, as if about to read it aloud, and on glancing through she seemed to change her mind.

"It is from Mrs. Harrington," she said. "It is a very kind letter."

She looked at her uncle, whose face had suddenly hardened. He seemed to be schooling himself to hear something unpleasant.

"Ay!" he muttered, "ay! I suppose she'll get her way now. I suppose I can't hope to keep you now. She'll get you—she'll get you."

"Then I think you are a very mean old man!" exclaimed Eve. "I don't believe you are a sailor at all. You are what you call a land- lubber, if you think that I am the sort of person to accept your kindness when you are prosperous, and then—and then when heavy weather comes to go away and leave you."

The old man smiled rather wanly, and fumbled with the red pocket- handkerchief.

"As it happens, Mrs. Harrington does not ask me to go and stay with her—she asks me—" She paused and laid her hand on his shoulder gently. "She asks me—to accept money."

Captain Bontnor sat upright.

"Ay-y-y," he said, "charity."

"Yes," said Eve quietly, "charity; and I'm going to accept it."

Captain Bontnor scratched his head. His manners were not, as has already been stated, remarkable for artificiality or superficial refinement. He screwed up his features as if he were swallowing something nasty.

"Read me the letter," he said.

Eve opened the missive again, and looked at it.

"She puts it very nicely," she said. "She asks if you will permit me to accept a dress allowance from a rich woman who does not always spend her money discreetly."

It must be admitted that Mrs. Harrington's nice way of putting it lost nothing by its transmission through Eve's lips.

Thus poor Charity creeps in wherever she can shelter. She is not proud. She does not ask to be accepted for her own sake; though Heaven knows she frequently is. She masquerades in any costume—she accepts the humiliation of any disguise. She is ready to be cast down before swine, or raised high before the eyes of fools. She is used as a tool or a stepping-stone—the humble handmaid of the tuft- hunter and the toady. She is dragged through the mire of the slums to the dwellings of the wealthy and idle. She is hounded up and down the world—the plaything of Fashion, the trap of the unwary, the washerwoman of the unclean who wish to try the paths of virtue— for a change. And she is still Charity, and she lives strong and pure in herself. It has been decreed that we shall ever have the poor beside us, and so long shall we also possess those who live on them.

Charity begetteth charity, and it was for Charity's sake that Eve Challoner took the bitter bread to herself, and accepted Mrs. Harrington's offer.

Her own pride lay between her and this woman whom she knew to be capricious, uncertain, lacking the quality of justice. Her duty towards Captain Bontnor lay between her and high Heaven.

So Eve Challoner learnt her first lesson in that school where we all are called to study sooner or later—the school of Adversity; where some of us pass creditably, whilst others are ploughed, and a few—a very few—take honours.



BOOK THE SECOND.



CHAPTER I. BITS OF LIFE.

Some far-off touch Of greatness, to know well I am not great.

The local house-agent anticipated no difficulty in letting Malabar Cottage, furnished, at a good weekly rental; and in due course a dreamy clergyman, with a wife who was anything but dreamy, came and saw and hired. The wide-awake wife was so interested in Eve that she forgot to settle several details which came to her mind afterwards. Her curiosity was so aroused that the special cupidity belonging to the wife of the dreamy clergyman was for the moment allayed, and she forgot to drive a hard bargain.

Moreover, Eve's manner was not exactly encouraging to the would-be bargainer. A stupendous ignorance of the tricks of furnished house- letting, combined with a certain lofty contempt for details, acquired in Spain, where such contempt is thoroughly understood, completely baffled the clergyman's wife. She concluded that Eve was a very stupid and ignorant girl, a poor housekeeper, and an incompetent woman of the world; and yet she was afraid of her, simply because she did not understand her. Jews, poor men's wives, and other persons who live by haggling, have a subtle fear of those who will not haggle.

So Malabar Cottage was let; and in due time the sad day arrived when Captain Bontnor had to bid farewell to his "bits of things." These "bits of things" were in reality bits of his life—and a human life is not so long nor so interesting an affair that we can afford lightly to break off any portion, to throw it away, or even to let it out on hire.

Captain Bontnor wandered rather disconsolately round the rooms after breakfast, and as Eve was with him he gave her a short inventory of these pieces of his life.

"That there harpoon," he said, pointing to a rusty relic on the wall above the mantelpiece, "was given to me by the finest whaling captain that ever found his way into the North water. When I first went to sea I thought I'd like to be a whaler; but two voyages settled that fancy. I'm told they shoot their harpoons out of a gun nowadays—poor sport that! And there's no sport like whalin'. Two thousand pounds at one end of a line and your own life at the other- -that's finer sport than these Cockney partridge-shooters know of.

"And that's my seal-pick—many a seal have I killed with that. That there's the portrait of the True Love, three-masted schooner, built at Littlehampton by Harvey. Sailed second mate, first mate, and master in her, I did. Then she was sold; and a lubber went and—and threw her on the Kentish Knock in a south-easterly gale. She was a pretty ship! I felt the loss as if she'd been my sweetheart—the pretty little True Love!

"That string of shells was given to me by a shipmate—old Charlie Sams—to bring home for his wife. He picked 'em up on the beach above James Town. Took yellow Jack, he did, and died in my arms— and he only had the shells to send to his young wife and a bit of a baby he was always botherin' and talkin' about. I did two cross voyages, and one of them round the Horn, before I got home, and I couldn't find the woman, she having moved. So when I left the sea, I just hung them up in case she happened to come along by chance and see them with his portrait underneath. That's Charlie Sams—a bit brown and faded. She won't come along now, I suppose. It is a matter of fifty-five years since Charlie died."

As he wandered round the house, so he wandered on in his reminiscences, until Eve led him out of the front door. He took his hat from the peg which he had been intending to unship and refix at a lower level for the last fifteen years, and followed her meekly into the garden. He paused to pick up some yellow jasmine leaves which had withered in the warmth of the May sun and fallen on the doorstep. Then he looked back longingly.

"You see," said Eve cheerfully, "it is only for a few months. We can always let it in the summer like this, and live luxuriously on our rent in the winter."

He threw back his shoulders and smiled bravely, trying to banish the thought of his "bits of things."

"Yes, dearie, it's only for a few months—only for a few months."

And they both knew that they could not hope to live in Malabar Cottage again—not, at all events, on the rent paid by the clergyman's wife.

They had taken lodgings in a small house near the harbour, which, as Eve pointed out, was much more convenient for the shops; and, besides, they could now buy their fish out of the boats. This last theory she propounded with a grave assumption of housekeeping knowledge which did not fail to impress Captain Bontnor.

The whole town knew of the captain's misfortune, and half the citizens of Somarsh shared in it. Only those who had saved nothing lost nothing, for Merton's was the only bank on the coast; and more than one old fisherman—bent with rheumatism, crippled by the hardships of a life spent half in the water, half on it—saw his savings—the fruit of long toilsome years—go to pay the London tradesmen a part of what young Merton owed them. It was the old, oft-repeated tale of over-education. A country banker's son sent to public school and university to be educated out of country banking and into nothing else.

Captain Bontnor was quite penniless. During his long life he had saved nearly four thousand pounds, and this sum he had placed on deposit with the Somarsh bankers, living very comfortably on the interest. The whole of this was absorbed—a mere drop in the financial ocean.

Mrs. Harrington had asked Eve to accept a dress allowance of forty pounds a year, and Eve accepted—for her uncle. Besides this she had a little ready money—the result of the sale of the contents of the Casa d'Erraha. A person who looked like a butler or a major- domo had gone over from Barcelona to Palma to attend this sale; and the local buyers laughed immoderately at him in their sleeves. He was, they opined, a mule—he did not know the value of things, and paid double for all he bought.

But the proceeds of the sale did not amount to much. Eve knew that something must be done. The money would soon be exhausted, and they could not live on the dress allowance. Since the failure of the bank, Captain Bontnor's mental grasp had seemed less reliable than ever, and Eve had kept these things to herself.

The captain's one servant—an aged female—who ruined his digestion and neglected her dusting, was prevailed upon to return to her people, and Eve and her uncle settled down to their restricted life in the lodgings which were so conveniently near the fishing harbour.

The captain was too old to break off his habits of life, so he walked his quarter-deck tramp, backwards and forwards beneath the window on the clean pavement of the High Street, which broadened out to the harbour. He went down to meet the boats, where he was ever a welcome onlooker, and he never came back without fish for which no payment had been taken.

He usually met the postman when he was keeping his watch on deck— beneath the little bay-window—and if there was a letter for Eve, he would pause in front of the house, and hand it through the open sash.

He did this one morning after they had been in the lodgings a month, and he had not added two turns to the regulation forty before Eve called to him. He bustled in at the door, hung his old straw hat on a peg, which was likewise too high, and went into the little parlour. As he was smoking, he stood in the doorway, for he had not yet got over his immense respect for the niece who was above him.

"Yes, dearie?" he said. "What to do now?"

Eve was standing near the window, holding a letter in her hand.

"Listen!" she said, and spreading out her elbows she read grandly -

"'MADAM,—I like your Spanish Notes and Sketches; but I cannot put in number one until I see number two. Send me more, or, better still, if convenient, when you are next in town, do me the honour of calling here.—Yours very truly—'

"Now listen, uncle."

"Yes, dear!"

"'Yours very truly, "'JOHN CRAIK.'"

"Lor!" ejaculated Captain Bontnor, "the gentleman that writes."

Eve handed him the letter, which he held, awestruck, with the tip of his thumb and finger.

"He doesn't write very well—he, he!" he added, with a chuckle. "I'm afraid it's no good my trying to read it without my glasses."

He blinked at the crabbed spidery caligraphy, and handed the letter back.

"It is signed John Craik, but Providence held the pen," said Eve. "If this letter had not come I should have had to leave you, uncle. I should have had to go and be a governess. And I do not want to leave you."

The old man's eyes filled suddenly, as old eyes sometimes will. He stuffed his pipe into his pocket and took her two hands in his, patting them tenderly.

He did not speak for some time, but stood blinking back the tears.

"Then God bless John Craik!" he said. "God bless him."

They sat down to talk this thing over, forgetful of the captain's pipe, which burnt a hole in the lining of his coat. There was so much to be discussed. Eve had written a certain number of short essays—painfully conscious all the while of their simplicity and faultiness. She did not know that so long as a person has his subject at his finger-ends, simplicity is rather to be commended than otherwise. It is the half-informed who are verbose. She had written simply of the simple life which she knew so well. She had depicted Spanish daily life from the keenly instinctive standpoint of a woman's observation; and only a week before she had sent a single essay—marked number one—to the editor of the Commentator, John Craik.

She had written for money, and made no disguise of her motive. Here was no literary lady with all the recognised adjuncts except the literature. She did not write in order that she might talk of having written. She did not talk in such flowing periods and with such overbearing wisdom that insincere friends in sheer weariness were called upon to suggest that she should and could write.

In sending her first small attempt to John Craik she had not forwarded therewith a long explanatory letter, which reticence had made him read the manuscript.

Eve read the great man's letter a second time, while the captain scratched his head and watched her.

"And," he said meekly, "what do you think of doing?"

Eve looked up with a happy smile.

"What he tells me," she answered. "Oh, I am so glad, uncle; I cannot tell you how glad I am."

The captain shuffled awkwardly on his feet.

"I'm more than glad," he said. "I'm sorter proud."

He pulled down his coat and walked to the window.

"Yes," he said, looking out into the street. "That's it. I'm proud. It's a great gift—writin'. A great gift."

Eve laughed.

"Oh!" she answered. "I'm afraid that I have no gift. It is a very, very minute talent. That is all. I always liked books, but I have not the gift for writing them."

Captain Bontnor never thought Eve was a great authoress. In his simple way this man had a vast deal of discrimination, as simple people often have. It is the oversubtle man who makes the most egregious mistakes, because most of us have not time to be subtle. He never suspected Eve of being a great authoress, and he never attributed to her any desire to attain that doubtful pinnacle of fame. But he saw very plainly the immense advantage to be gathered in this time from her talent. In his simplicity he hoped that something would turn up for him to do, in a world which has no pity nor charity for that which is old, effete, and out of fashion.

"Yes," he said, after deep thought, "we must do what he tells us. There's no harm in that."

Eve laughed.

"I thought," she said, "that we understood pride in Spain and Mallorca; but I have never met such a proud caballero as you."

She was standing behind him where he stood, looking grimly out of the window, her two hands resting on his broad shoulders.

"I suppose," she went on, "that you have once or twice humbled your pride so much as to accept a ship when it was offered you. You said that there are plenty who would give you a command now. John Craik is giving me a ship, that is all."

The captain nodded.

"Yes," he said, "that's it, that's it. You've got your first ship."



CHAPTER II. A COMPACT.

Prends moy tel que je suy.

The tendency of the age is to peep behind the scenes. The world is growing old, and human nature is nearly worn through; we are beginning to see the bare bones of it. But a strange survival of youthfulness is that remarkable fascination of the unseen—the desire to get behind the scenes and see the powder for ourselves. If a man makes his livelihood by lifting horses and other heavy objects from the earth, we immediately wish to know details of his private life, and an obliging journalist interviews him. If another write a book, we immediately wish to know how he does it, where, when, and why. We also like to see his portrait on the fly-leaf—or HE likes to see it there.

Eve Challoner was lamentably behind the spirit of the age in that she did not know how she wrote a series of articles destined to attain renown. But as she never went out to meet the interviewer, he never came to her. She fell into a habit of going out for long walks by herself, and in the course of these peregrinations she naturally acquired the custom of thinking about her writing.

During these long walks Captain Bontnor remained at home alone, or joined a knot of fellow-mariners on the green in front of the reading-room. When Eve came home with her mind full of matter to be set down on paper he discreetly went to keep his watch on deck— backwards and forwards on the pavement in front of the window. At each turn the old sailor paused to cast his eyes over the whole horizon, after the manner of mariners, as if he were steering Somarsh across the North Sea.

Thus uncle and niece glided imperceptibly into that mode of life which is called humdrum, and which some wise people consider the best mode of getting through existence. Sketch number two was written, rewritten, liked, hated, and finally sent to John Craik, with a letter explaining that the writer lived in Suffolk, and could not for the moment make it convenient to go to London. John Craik was a busy man. He made no answer, and in a few days the proof of sketch number one arrived, with a little printed notice of instructions as to correcting and returning. Of all fleeting glamours that of the proof-sheet is assuredly lightest on the wing, and Eve duly hated her own works in print, as we all do hate our first triumphs. Afterwards we get resigned—much as we grow resigned to the face we see in the looking-glass.

At this time Captain Bontnor conceived the idea that it was incumbent upon him to take up seriously, though late in life, the higher walks of literature.

"Now," he said to Eve one evening, when the first proof had been almost wept over, "now, dearie, what author would you recommend to a man who has a natural likin' for reading, but owing to the circumstances of his life has had no opportunity of cultivatin' his taste?"

"Well, uncle, a good deal would depend upon his inclination—whether he liked poetry or fiction, or serious reading."

"Of course, of course," acceded Captain Bontnor, pressing the tobacco into his pipe with his thumb; "I am taking that into consideration. There's all sorts to be had now, ain't there—poetry and fiction and novels? I am not sure that the style would matter much, so long—so long as the print was nice and clear."

Eve duly gave her opinion without pressing the question too closely, and while she was out on her long walks Captain Bontnor laboriously cultivated his neglected taste. He sat in the window-seat with much gravity, and more than made up in application for the youthful quickness which he lacked. He resolutely refused to look up from his book when he heard the alternate thud and stump which announced the passage down to the harbour of his particular crony, Mark Standon, whose other leg had been buried at sea. He kept the dictionary beside him, and when the writer used a word of sonorous ring and obscure meaning he gravely looked it out.

The first time that Mr. Standon saw his friend thus engaged he stood on the pavement and expressed his surprise with more force than elegance; whereupon Captain Bontnor went out and explained to him exactly how it stood. So marked was the old sailor's influence on the social affairs at Somarsh that there was a notable revival of literary taste and discussion at the corner of the Lifeboat House, where the local intellect assembled.

Captain Bontnor was engaged one day in the study of an author called Dickens, to whose works he had not yet found time to devote his full attention, when a strange footstep on the pavement made him look up. It certainly was not Standon's halting gait, and a lack of iron nail certified to the fact that it was no Somarsh man. The captain looked over his spectacles and saw Cipriani de Lloseta studying the numbers on the doors as he came down the quiet little street.

The sight gave the old sailor rather a shock. He abandoned the study of Mr. Dickens and took off his spectacles. Then he scratched his head—always an ominous sign. His first instinct was to go and open the door; then he remembered that the new-comer was a nobleman who lived in a palace, and that he himself was indirectly a gentleman, inasmuch as he lived in the same house as a lady—his niece. So he sat still and allowed the landlady to open the door.

When Cipriani de Lloseta was ushered into the tiny room he found the captain half-bowing on the hearthrug.

"Captain Bontnor," he said, with all the charm of manner which was his, "this is a pleasure."

The captain shook hands, and with the rough hospitality of the cabin drew forward his own armchair, which the Count took at once.

"When last we met," he said, "I had the privilege of receiving you at my house in Barcelona—a poor dark place in a narrow street. Now here you have a sea-view."

"But this is not my house," said Captain Bontnor, feeling unaccountably at ease with this nobleman. "Malabar Cottage is farther up the hill. I've got all my bits of things up there."

"Indeed. It would have given me pleasure to see them. I learnt from a mutual—friend, Mrs. Harrington, of your change of address."

Captain Bontnor looked at him keenly; and who shall say that the rough old man did not appreciate the refined tact of his visitor?

"I've had losses," he said.

The Count nodded shortly. He was drawing off his gloves.

"I do not know," he said conversationally, "if it has been your experience, but for myself I have found that reverses of fortune are not without some small consolation. They prove the friendship of one's friends."

The captain reflected.

"Yes," he said, "you're right, Mr.—I mean Count—and—and brings the good out of women."

"Women!" the Count repeated gravely. "You refer to Miss Challoner— I see signs of her presence in this room. Is she out?"

"Yes—I am afraid she is." He glanced nervously at the clock. "She is not likely to be in for an hour and more yet."

"I am sorry," said the Count; "but also I am rather glad. I shall thus have an opportunity of asking your opinion upon one or two matters—between men of the world, you know."

"I am afraid my opinion is not of much value, sir, except it's about schooners—I always sailed in schooners."

The Count nodded gravely.

"In my country," he said, "we usually go in for brigs; they find them easier to handle. But you know Mallorca—you have seen for yourself."

The captain was not listening; he was looking at the modest lodging- house sideboard.

"I was wondering," he explained, with a transparent simplicity which was perhaps as good as that which is called good breeding, "whether you would take a glass of sherry wine."

"I should like nothing better," said the Count. "It will give me pleasure to take a glass of wine with you."

Quietly, imperceptibly, De Lloseta set Captain Bontnor at his ease, and at the same time he mastered him. They spoke of indifferent topics—topics which, however, were well within the captain's knowledge of the world. Then suddenly the Count laid aside the social mask which he wore with such consummate ease.

"I came down to Somarsh," he said, "because I am deeply distressed at your reverse of fortune. I came to see you, captain, because when I had the pleasure of meeting you at Barcelona I saw you to be a just man, and one to whom one could speak openly. I am a rich man—you understand. Need I say more?"

Captain Bontnor blinked uncertainly.

"No," he answered, "I'm thinkin' it isn't necessary."

"Not between men of the world," urged Cipriani de Lloseta. "It is not for your sake. I would not insult you in such a way. It is for Eve. For a woman's sake a man may easily sacrifice his pride."

The captain nodded and glanced at the clock. He had not fully realised until that moment how dependent he was upon his niece.

"You know," continued the Count, following up his advantage, "all the somewhat peculiar circumstances of the case. Do you think there is any chance of Eve's reconsidering her decision?"

The captain shook his head.

"No," he answered bluntly, "I don't. Since she came back from London—" he paused.

"Yes, since she came back from London?" suggested the Count.

"She seems more determined than ever."

The Count was looking at him keenly.

"Then," he said, "you also have noticed a change."

Captain Bontnor shuffled in his seat and likewise in his speech.

"I suppose," he said, "that she has grown into a woman. Adversity's done it."

"Yes," said the Count, "your observations seem to me to be correct. I had the pleasure of seeing her once or twice when she was staying at Mrs. Harrington's; but I did not refer to the question raised at my house in Barcelona, because I noticed the change to which you allude. Instead, I attempted to gain the co-operation and assistance of a mutual friend, Henry FitzHenry."

Cipriani de Lloseta paused and looked at his companion, who in turn gazed stolidly at the fire.

"And I received a rebuff," added the Count. He waited for some little time, but Captain Bontnor had no comment to offer, so De Lloseta went on: "Challoner was one of my best friends. I do not feel disposed to let the matter drop, more especially now that you have been compelled to leave Malabar Cottage. I propose entreating Miss Challoner to reconsider her decision. Will you help me?"

"Yes," answered Captain Bontnor, "I will."

"Then tell me if Eve has accepted assistance from Mrs. Harrington?"

"Yes, she has."

The Count swore softly in Spanish.

"I am sorry for that," he said aloud. "I am superstitious. I have a theory that Mrs. Harrington's money is apt to be a curse to those upon whom it is bestowed."

"Mrs. Harrington's no friend of mine," said Captain Bontnor; and De Lloseta, who was looking out of the window, smiled somewhat grimly.

"Perhaps," he said after a little pause, "perhaps you will allow me to claim the privilege which you deny to her?"

"Yes," answered Captain Bontnor awkwardly; "yes, if you care to."

"Thanks. I see Miss Challoner—Eve—coming. I count on your assistance."

Eve paused on the threshold in astonishment at the sight of the Count de Lloseta and her uncle in grave discourse over a glass of sherry.

"You!" she said. "You here!"

And he wondered why she suddenly lost colour.

"I," he answered, "I—here to pay my respects."

Eve gave a little gasp of relief. For a moment she was off her guard—with a dangerous man watching her.

"I thought you had bad news," she said.

And Cipriani de Lloseta knew that this was a woman whose heart was at sea.

"No," he answered; "I merely came to quarrel."

He drew forward a chair, and Eve sat down.

"We shall always quarrel," he went on, "unless you are kind. Let us begin at once and get it over, because I want to stay to lunch. Will you reconsider your decision with respect to the Val d'Erraha?"

Eve shook her head and looked at her uncle.

"No," she answered; "I cannot do that. Not now."

"Some day?" he suggested.

"Not now," repeated the girl; and, looking up, her face suddenly became grave, as if reflecting the expression in the dark Spanish eyes bent upon her.

"You are cruel!" he said.

"I am young—"

"Is it not the same thing?"

"And I can work," added Eve.

"Yes," he said. "But in my old-fashioned way I am prejudiced against a lady working. In the days of women's rights ladies are apt to forget the charm of white hands."

Eve made no answer.

"Then it is not peace?"

"No," she answered, with a smile; "not yet."

She was standing beside Captain Bontnor, with her hand on his shoulder.

"Uncle and I," she added, "are not beaten yet."

Cipriani de Lloseta smiled darkly.

"Will you promise me one thing," he said; "that when you are beaten you will come to me before you go to any one else?"

"Yes," answered Eve, "I think we can promise that."



CHAPTER III. BAFFLED.

He conquers who awaits the end.

Fortune fixed her wayward fancy on the first sketch that Eve contributed to the Commentator. Wayward, indeed, for Eve herself knew that it was not good, and in the lettered quiet of the editorial sanctum John Craik smiled querulously to himself. John Craik had a supreme contempt for the public taste, but he knew exactly what it wanted. He was like a chef smiling over his made dishes. He did not care for the flavour himself, but his palate was subtle enough to detect the sweet or bitter that tickled his master's tongue. He served the public faithfully, with a twisted, cynic smile behind his spectacles—for John Craik had a family to feed. He knew that Eve's work was only partially good—true woman's work that might cease to flow at any moment. But he detected the undeniable originality of it, and the public palate likes a novel flavour.

So deeply versed was he in worldly knowledge, so thoroughly had he gauged the critic, the journalist, and the public, that before he unfolded a newspaper he could usually foresee the length, the nature, and the literary merit of the criticism. He knew that the tendency of the age is to acquire as much knowledge as possible in a short time. He looked upon the world as a huge kindergarten, and the Commentator as its school-book. It was good that the world's knowledge of its own geography should be extended, but the world must not be allowed to detect the authority of the usher's voice. There are a lot of people who, like women at a remnant sale, go about the paths of literature picking up scraps which do not match, and never can be of the slightest use. It was John Craik's business to set out his remnant counter to catch these wandering gleaners, and Eve sent him her wares by a lucky chance at the moment when he wanted them.

The editor of the Commentator was sitting in his deep chair before the fire one morning about eleven o'clock, when the clerk, whose business it was to tell glib lies about his chief, brought him a card.

"Lloseta," said Craik aloud to himself. "Ask him to come up."

"The man who ought to have written the Spanish sketches," he commented, when the clerk had left.

The Count came into the room with a certain ease of manner subtly indicative of the fact that it was not the first time that he had visited it. He shook hands and waited until the clerk had closed the door.

There was a copy of the month's Commentator on the table. De Lloseta took it up and opened it at the first page.

"Who wrote that?" he asked, holding out the magazine.

Craik laughed—a sudden boyish laugh—but he held his sides the while.

"You not only beard the lion in his den, but you ask him to tell you the tricks of his trade," he said. "Sit down, all the same. You don't mind my pipe, do you?"

The Spaniard sat down and sought a cigarette-case in his waistcoat pocket with a deliberation that made his companion fidget in his chair.

"You asked me to write those sketches," said the Count pleasantly. "I delayed and you gave the order to some one else. Assuredly I have a certain right to ask who my supplanter is."

"None whatever, my dear Lloseta. I did not give the order for those sketches—they came."

"From whom?"

"Ah!"

"You will not tell me?"

"My dear man, I cannot. The smell of printing ink is not good for a man's morals. Leave me my unsullied honour."

The Count had lighted his cigarette. He looked keenly at his companion's deeply-lined face, and the blue smoke floated between them.

"There are not many people who could have written that article," he said. "For the few English who know Spain like that are known to the natives. And no Spaniard would have dared to write it."

John Craik laughed, and while he was laughing his eyes were grave and full of keen observation.

"Then you admit that it is true," he said.

"Yes," answered the Count; "it is true—all of it. The writer knows my country as few Englishmen—or WOMEN know it."

John Craik was leaning back in his deep chair an emaciated, pain- stricken form. His calm grey eyes met the quick glance, and did not fall nor waver.

"Then you will not tell me?"

"No. But why are you so anxious to know?"

The Count smoked for a few seconds in silence.

"I will tell you," he said suddenly, "in confidence."

Craik nodded, and settled himself again in his chair. He was a very fidgety man.

"It is not the first article that I care about," explained De Lloseta. "It is that which is behind it. This"—he laid his hand on the page—"is my own country, the north and east of Spain, the wildest part of the Peninsula, the home of the Catalonians, who have always been the leaders in strife and warfare. It is the country from whence my family has its source. All that is written about Catalonia or the Baleares must necessarily refer in part to me and mine. This writer may know too much."

"I think," said John Craik, "that I can guarantee that if the writer does know too much, the Commentator shall not be the channel through which the knowledge will reach the public."

"Thanks; but—can you guarantee it? Can you guarantee that the public interest, being aroused by these articles, may not ask for further details, which details might easily be given elsewhere, in something less—respectable—than the Commentator?"

"My dear sir, one would think you had a crime on your conscience."

Cipriani de Lloseta smiled—such a smile as John Craik had never seen before.

"I have many," he answered. "Who has not?"

"Yes; they accumulate as life goes on, do they not?"

"What I fear," went on De Lloseta, "is the idle gossip which obtains in England under the pleasant title of 'Society Notes,' 'Boudoir Chat,' and other new-fangled vulgarities. In Spain we have not that."

"Then Spain is the Promised Land."

"Your Society journalists may talk of the English nobility, though the aristocracy that fills the 'Society Notes' is almost invariably the aristocracy of yesterday. But I want to keep the Spanish families out of it if possible—the names that were there before printing was invented."

"Printing and education are too cheap nowadays," said John Craik. "They are both dangerous instruments in the hands of fools, and it is the fool who goes to the cheap market. But you need not be afraid of the Society papers. It is only those who wish to be advertised who find themselves there."

De Lloseta's thoughts had gone back to the Commentator. He picked up the magazine and was looking over the pages of the Spanish article.

"It is clever," he said. "It is very clever."

Craik nodded, after the manner of one who had formed his own opinion and intended to abide by it. He was a gentle-mannered man in the ordinary intercourse of life, but on the battlefield of letters he was a veritable Coeur-de-Lion. He quailed before no man.

"You know," said the Count, "there are only two persons who could have written this—and they are women. If it is the one, I fear nothing; if the other, I fear everything."

"Then," said John Craik, shuffling in his chair, "fear nothing."

De Lloseta looked at him sharply.

"I could force you to tell a lie by mentioning the name of the woman who wrote this," he said.

"Then don't!" said John Craik. "I lie beautifully!"

"No, I will not. But I will ask you to do something for me instead: let me read the proofs of these as they are printed."

For exactly two seconds John Craik pondered.

"I shall be happy to do that," he said. "I will let you know when the proof is ready. You must come here and read it in this room."

Cipriani de Lloseta rose from his seat.

"Thank you," he said, holding out his hand. "I will not keep you from your work. You are doing a better action than you are aware of."

He took the frail fingers in his grasp for a second and turned to go. Before the door closed behind him John Craik was at work again.

So Eve Challoner's work passed through Cipriani de Lloseta's hand, and that nobleman came into her life from another point. It would seem that in whichsoever direction she turned, the Mallorcan was waiting for her with his grave persistence, his kindly determination to watch over her, to exercise that manly control over her life which is really the chief factor of feminine happiness on earth—if women only knew it. For all through Nature there are qualities given to the male for the sole advantage of the female, and the beasts of the forest rise up in silent protest against the nonsense that is talked to-day of woman's place in the world. We may consider the beasts of the field to advantage, for through all the chances and changes of education, of female emancipation, and the subjection of the weaker sort of man, there will continue to run to the end of time the one grand principle that the male is there to protect the female and the female to care for her young.

Cipriani de Lloseta thus late in life seemed to have found an object. Eve Challoner, while bringing back the past with a flood of recollections—for she seemed to carry the air of Mallorca with her- -had so far brought him to the present that for the first time since thirty years and more he began to be interested in the life that was around him.

He suspected—nay, he almost knew—that Eve had written the article in the Commentator which had attracted so much attention. John Craik had to a certain extent baffled him. He had called on the editor of the great periodical in the hope of gleaning some detail— some little scrap of information which would confirm his suspicion— but he had come away with nothing of value excepting the promise that the printed matter should pass through his hands before it reached the public.

Even if he was mistaken, and this proved after all to be the work of Mrs. Harrington, the fact of the proof being offered to his scrutiny was in itself an important safeguard. This, however, was only a secondary possibility. He knew that Eve had written this thing, and he wished to have the opportunity of correcting one or two small mistakes which he anticipated, and which he felt that he himself alone could rectify.

In the meantime John Craik was scribbling a letter to Eve in his minute caligraphy.

"DEAR MADAM" (he wrote), "Your first article is, I am glad to say, attracting considerable attention. It is absolutely necessary that I should see you, with a view of laying down plans for further contributions. Please let me know how this can be arranged. Yours truly, "JOHN CRAIK."

And at the same time another man, to whom all these things were of paramount importance—to whom all that touched Eve's life was as if it touched his own—was reading the Commentator. Fitz, on his way home from the Mediterranean, to fill the post of navigating- lieutenant to a new ironclad at that time fitting out at Chatham, bought the Commentator from an enterprising newsagent given to maritime venture in Plymouth harbour. The big steamer only stayed long enough to discharge her mails, and Fitz being a sailor did not go ashore. Instead, he sat on a long chair on deck and read the Commentator. He naturally concluded that at last Cipriani de Lloseta had acceded to John Craik's wish.

The Ingham-Bakers had come home from Malta and were at this time staying with Mrs. Harrington in London. Agatha had of late taken to reading the newspapers somewhat exhaustively. She read such columns as are usually passed over by the majority of womankind—such as naval intelligence and those uninteresting details of maritime affairs printed in small type, and stated to emanate from Lloyd's, wherever that vague source may be.

From these neglected corners of the Morning Post Agatha Ingham-Baker had duly learnt that Henry FitzHenry had been appointed navigating- lieutenant to the Terrific, lying at Chatham, which would necessitate his leaving the Kittiwake at Gibraltar and returning to England at once. She also read that the Indian liner Croonah had sailed from Malta for Gibraltar and London, with two hundred and five passengers and twenty-six thousand pounds in specie.

And John Craik had written to Eve to come to London, where she had a permanent invitation to stay with Mrs. Harrington.

From over the wide world these people seemed to be drifting together like leaves upon a pond—borne hither and thither by some unseen current, swirled suddenly by a passing breath—at the mercy of wind and weather and chance, each occupied in his or her small daily life, looking no further ahead than the next day or the next week. And yet they were drifting surely and steadily towards each other, driven by the undercurrent of Fate, against which the strongest will may beat itself in vain.



CHAPTER IV. FOR THE HIGHEST BIDDER.

Let thine eyes look right on.

"How handsome Fitz looks in his uniform!" Mrs. Ingham-Baker said, with that touch of nervous apprehension which usually affected all original remarks addressed by her to Mrs. Harrington.

Mrs. Ingham-Baker had been to Malta and back, but the wonders of the deep had failed to make a wiser woman of her. If one wishes to gain anything by seeing the world, it is best to go and look at it early in life.

"Yes," answered Mrs. Harrington, with a glance in the direction of Agatha, the only other occupant of the drawing-room—"yes; he is a good-looking young fellow."

Agatha was reading the Globe, sitting upright and stiff, for she was wearing a new ball-dress.

"I think," went on Mrs. Ingham-Baker volubly, "that I have never seen a naval uniform before—in a room close at hand, you know. Of course, on board the Croonah the officers wore a sort of uniform, but they had not a sword."

Agatha turned over her newspaper impatiently. Mrs. Harrington was listening with an air of the keenest interest, which might have been sarcastic.

"Poor Luke had not quite so much gold braid—"

Agatha looked up, and Mrs. Ingham-Baker collapsed.

"I should think," she added, after some nervous shufflings in her seat, "that a sword is a great nuisance. Should you not think so, Marion dear?"

"I do not know," replied Mrs. Harrington; "I never wore one."

Mrs. Ingham-Baker laughed eagerly at herself, after the manner of persons who cannot afford to keep up a decent self-respect.

"But I always rather think," she went on, with an apprehensive glance towards her daughter, "that a sword is out of place in a drawing-room, or—or anywhere where there are carpets, you know."

"I thought you had never seen one before," put in Agatha, without looking up from her newspaper. "In a room—close at hand, you know."

"No—no, of course not; but I knew, dear, that they were worn. Of course, in warfare it is different."

"In warfare," said Mrs. Harrington patiently, "they are usually supposed to come in rather handy."

"Yes—he-he!" acquiesced Mrs. Ingham-Baker, adjusting a bracelet on her arm with something approaching complacency. She thought she began to see daylight through the conversational maze in which—with the best intentions—she had involved herself. "But I was only thinking that for a lady's drawing-room I think I like Luke's quiet black clothes just as much."

"I am glad of that," said Mrs. Harrington; "because I expect you will see several other men in the same dress this evening."

Mrs. Harrington had got up a party to go to the great naval ball of the season—a charity ball. Her party consisted of the Ingham- Bakers and the FitzHenrys, and for the first time for eight years the twin brothers met in the house in Grosvenor Gardens. They were at this moment in the dining-room together, where they had been left by their hostess with a kindly injunction to finish the port wine, duly tempered—as was all Mrs. Harrington's kindness—by instructions not to smoke.

Agatha's feelings were rather mixed, so, like a wise young woman of the world, she read the evening paper with great assiduity and refused to think.

The evening had been one of comparisons. Fitz and Luke had come together, for they were sharing rooms in Jermyn Street. Fitz, smart, upright, essentially a naval officer and an unquestionable gentleman. Luke, a trifle browner, more weather-beaten, with a faint, subtle suggestion of a rougher life. Fitz, easy, good- natured, calmly sure of himself—utterly without self-consciousness. Luke, conscious of inferior grade, not quite at ease, jealously on the alert for the comparison.

And Agatha had known from the first moment that in the eyes of the world—and Mrs. Harrington looked through those eyes—there was no comparison. Fitz carried all before him. All except Agatha. The girl was puzzled. Luke could not be compared with Fitz, and the whole world did not compare with Luke. She was fully awake to the contradiction, and she could not reconcile her facts. She had been very properly brought up at the Brighton Boarding School, receiving a good, practical, modern, nineteenth-century education—a curriculum of solid facts culled from the latest school books, from which Love had very properly been omitted.

And now, as she pretended to read the Globe Agatha was puzzling vaguely and numbly over the contradictions that come into human existence with the small adjunct called love. She was wondering how it was that she saw Luke's faults and the thousand ways in which he was inferior to his brother, and yet that with all these to stay him up Fitz did not compare with Luke. After all, there must have been some small defect in the education which she had received, for instead of thinking these futile things she ought to have been attempting to discover—as was her mother at that moment—which of the two brothers seemed more likely to inherit Mrs. Harrington's money.

Agatha's thoughts went back to the moment on the deck of the Croonah, when the sea breeze swept over her and Luke, and the strength of it, the simple, open force, seemed to be part and parcel of him—of the strong arms around her in which she was content to lie quiescent. She wondered for a moment whether it had all been true.

For Agatha Ingham-Baker was essentially human and womanly, in that she was, and ever would be, a creature of possibilities. She took up her long gloves and began slowly to draw them on. They were quite new, and she smoothed them with a distinct satisfaction, under which there brooded the sense of a new possibility. In all her calculations of life—and these had been many—she had never thought of the possibility of misery. She buttoned the gloves, she drew them cunningly up over her rounded arms, and she wondered whether she was going to be a miserable woman all her life. She saw herself suddenly with those inward eyes which are sometimes vouchsafed to us momentarily, and she saw Misery—in its best dress.

She looked up as Fitz and Luke came into the room. Luke's eyes were only for her. Fitz, with the unconcealed absorption which was often his, absolutely ignored her presence. And the little incident roused something contradictory in Agatha—something evil and, alas! feminine. She awoke to the very matter-of-factness of the present moment, and she determined to make a conquest of Fitz.

Agatha was not quite on her guard, and Mrs. Harrington's cold grey eyes were alert. It had once been this lady's intention to use Agatha as a means of subjecting Luke to her own capricious will— Agatha being the alternative means where money had failed. She had almost forgotten this when Luke came into the room with eyes only for Agatha—and the girl was looking at Fitz.

"I suppose, Agatha," said Mrs. Harrington, "you will not be at a loss for partners to-night? You will know plenty of dancing men?"

"Oh, I suppose so," replied Agatha indifferently. She turned over her newspaper and retreated, as it were, behind her first line of defence—the sure line of audacious silence.

"The usual throng?"

"The usual throng," answered Agatha imperturbably.

Luke was biting his nails impatiently. His jealousy was patent to any woman. Fitz was talking to Mrs. Ingham-Baker.

"I should advise you young men to secure your dances now," continued Mrs. Harrington, with her usual fatal persistence. "Once Agatha gets into the room she will be snapped up."

Fitz turned round with his good-natured smile—the smile that indicates a polite attention to an indifferent conversation—and Mrs. Ingham-Baker was free to thrust in her awkward oar. She splashed in.

"Oh, I am sure she will not let herself be snapped up to-night; will you, dear?"

"That, no doubt, depends upon the snapper," put in Mrs. Harrington, looking—perhaps by accident—at Fitz. "Fitz," she went on, "come here and tell me all about your new ship. I hope you are proud—I am. I am often laughed at for a garrulous old woman when I begin talking of you!"

She glanced aside at Mrs. Ingham-Baker, who was beaming on Fitz, as the simple-hearted beam on the rising sun.

"Yes," said the stout lady, "we are all so delighted. Agatha was only saying yesterday that your success was wonderful. She was quite excited about it."

The fond mother looked invitingly towards her daughter with a smile that said as plainly as words -

"There you are! I have cleared the stage for you—step in and score a point."

But Agatha did not respond.

"I suppose it is a steamer," continued Mrs. Ingham-Baker eagerly. "A steam man-of-war."

"Yes," replied Fitz, with perfect gravity, "a steam man-of-war."

"The Horrible—or the Terrible, is it not?"

"The Terrific."

There was an account of the new war-ship in the evening paper which Agatha had laid aside, and Fitz was impolitely glancing at this while he spoke. The journal gave the names of the officers. Fitz was wondering whether Eve Challoner ever saw the Globe.

Mrs. Ingham-Baker became lost in a maternal fit of admiration. She was looking at Agatha with her head on one side. At intervals she glanced towards Fitz—an inviting glance, as if to draw his attention to the fact that one of Nature's most perfect productions was waiting to gladden his vision.

"Look!" that little glance seemed to say. "Look at Agatha. IS she not lovely?"

But Fitz was still wondering whether Eve was in the habit of reading the Globe. He often wondered thus about her daily habits, trying to picture, in his ignorant masculine way, the hours and minutes of a girl's daily existence.

Mrs. Ingham-Baker could not stand this waste of his time and Agatha's dress.

"What do you think of the frock?" she asked Mrs. Harrington, in a whisper which was audible to every one in the room.

"It is very pretty," replied the hostess, who happened to be in a good humour. Dress possessed a small corner of her cold heart. It was one of very few weaknesses. It was almost a redeeming point in a too man-like character. Her own dresses were always perfect, usually of the richest silk—and grey. Hence she was known as the Grey Lady, and only a few—for Society has neither time nor capacity for thought—wondered whether the colour had penetrated to her soul.

The two now became engaged in a technical conversation, which was only interrupted by the arrival of tea. Luke and Agatha were talking about Malta. She was telling him that their friends in Valetta had invited them to go again next year, and the Croonah was mentioned.

While the hostess was attending to the teapot, Mrs. Ingham-Baker took the opportunity of disturbing Fitz—of stirring him up, so to speak, and making him look at Agatha.

"Do you think you would have recognised your old playmate if you had met her accidentally—to-night, for instance, at the ball?" she asked.

Again the inviting glance toward her daughter, to which Fitz naturally responded. It was too obvious to ignore.

"No; I do not think so," he replied, going back in his mind to the recollection of a thin-legged little girl with lank hair.

Mrs. Ingham-Baker's proud eyes rested complacently on her offspring.

"Do you like her dress?" she asked in a whisper—only audible to him. But Agatha knew the gist of it. The arm and shoulder nearest to them gave a little jerk of self-consciousness.

"Very pretty," replied Fitz; and Mrs. Ingham-Baker stored the remark away for future use. For all she knew—or all she wanted to know— it might refer to Agatha's self.

"I am afraid I shall lose her, you know—horribly afraid," whispered Mrs. Ingham-Baker, knowing the value of competition in all things.

Fitz looked genuinely sympathetic, and glanced at Agatha again, wondering what disease had marked her for its own. Mrs. Ingham- Baker thought fit to explain indirectly, as was her wont.

"She is very much admired," she said under her breath, with a sigh and a lugubrious shake of the head.

"Oh," murmured Fitz, with a smile.

"Yes," answered Mrs. Ingham-Baker. She heaved a sigh, observed a decent pause, and then added, "Does it surprise you?"

"Not in the least. It is most natural."

"You think so—really?"

"Of course I do," answered Fitz.

There was another little pause, and Mrs. Ingham-Baker then said, in a tone of friendly confidence -

"I advise you to secure your dances early. She will be engaged three deep in a very short time—a lot of mere boys she does not want to dance with."

Fitz thanked her fervently, and went to help Mrs. Harrington.

Mrs. Ingham-Baker sat back in her chair, well pleased with herself. Like many of her kind, she began the social campaign with the initial error of underrating her natural foes—young men.



CHAPTER V. THE TEAR ON THE SWORD.

But over all things brooding slept The quiet sense of something lost.

Agatha was singularly uncertain of herself. If it had not been for her education—at the Brighton school they had taught her that tears are not only idle, but also harmful to the complexion—she would have felt inclined to weep.

There was something wrong about the world this evening, and she did not know what it was. Little things irritated her—such as the creak of Mrs. Harrington's rich silk dress as that lady breathed. Agatha almost hated Fitz, without knowing why. She wanted Luke to come and speak to her, and yet the necessity of limiting their conversation to mere social platitudes made her hope that he would not do so.

At length she rose to go and make her last preparations for the ball. The old habit was so strong upon her that unconsciously she gave a little swing of the hips to throw her skirt out—to show herself to the greatest advantage in the perfect dress. There was a tiny suggestion of the thoroughbred horse in the paddock—as there always is in the attitude of some young persons, though they would not be grateful were one to tell them of it—a certain bridling, a sleek step, and a lamentably obvious search for the eye of admiration. Fitz opened the door for her, and she gave him a glance as she passed him—a preliminary shot to find the range, as it were- -to note which way the wind blew.

In the dimly-lighted hall Agatha suddenly became aware of a hot sensation in the eyelids. The temperature of the tear of vexation is a high one. As she passed towards the staircase, her glance was attracted by a sword, bright of hilt, dark of sheath. Fitz's sword, lying with his white gloves on the table, where he had laid them on coming into the house. The footman had drawn the blade an inch or so from the sheath—to look at the chasing—to handle the steel that deals in warfare with all the curiosity of one whose business lies among the knives of peace.

Agatha paused and looked at the tokens of Fitz's calling. She thought of Luke, who had no sword. And the hot unwonted tear fell on the blade.

All the evening Mrs. Harrington had been marked in her attention to Fitz. It was quite obvious that he was—for the moment, at all events—the favoured nephew. And Mrs. Ingham-Baker noted these things.

"My dear," she whispered to Agatha, when they were waiting in the hall for their hostess, "it is Fitz, of course. I can see that with half an eye."

Agatha shrugged her shoulders in a rude manner, suggesting almost that her mother was deprived of more reliable means of observation than the moiety mentioned.

"What is Fitz?" she asked, with weary patience.

"Well, I can only tell you that she has called him 'dear' twice this evening, and I have never heard her do the same to Luke."

"A lot Luke cares!" muttered Agatha scornfully, and her mother, whose sense of logic did not run to the perception that Luke's feelings were beside the question, discreetly collapsed into her voluminous wraps.

She was, however, quite accustomed to be treated thus with contumely, and then later to see her suggestions acted upon—a feminine consolation which men would do well to take unto themselves. As soon as they entered the ball-room, Mrs. Ingham- Baker, with that supernatural perspicacity which is sometimes found in stupid mothers, saw that Agatha was refusing her usual partners. She noted her daughter's tactics with mingled awe and admiration, both of which tributes were certainly deserved. She saw Agatha look straight through one man at the decorations on the wall behind; she saw her greet an amorous youth of tender years with a semi-maternal air of protection which at once blighted his hopes, cured his passion, and made him abandon the craving for a dance. Agatha was evidently reserving herself and her programme for some special purposes, and she did it with a skill bred of long experience.

Luke was the first to come and ask for a dance—nay, he demanded it.

"Do you remember the last time we danced together?" he asked, as he wrote on her card.

"Yes," she replied, in a voice which committed her to nothing. She did not look at him, but past him; to where Fitz was talking to Mrs. Harrington.

But he was not content with that. He retained the card and stood in front of her, waiting with suppressed passion in every muscle, waiting for her to meet his eyes.

At last, almost against her will, she did, and for one brief moment she was supremely happy. It was only, however, for a moment. Sent, apparently, by a very practical Providence to save her from herself, a young man blustered good-naturedly through the crowd and planted himself before her with a cheery aplomb which seemed to indicate his supposition that in bringing her his presence he brought the desire of her heart and the brightest moment of the evening.

"Well, Agatha," he said, in that loud voice which, with all due deference, usually marks the Harrovian, "how many have you got for me? No rot now! I want my share, you know, eh?"

Heedless of Luke's scowling presence, he held out his hand, encased in a very tight glove, asking with a good-natured jerk of the head for her programme.

"Is your wife here?" asked Agatha, smilingly relinquishing her card.

"Wife be blowed!" he answered heartily. "Why so formal? Of course she's here, carrying on with all the young 'uns as usual. She's as fit as paint. But she won't like to be called stiff names. Why don't you call her Maggie?"

Agatha smiled and did not explain. She doubtless had a good reason for the unusually formal inquiry, and she glanced at Luke to see that his brow had cleared.

Then suddenly some instinct, coming she knew not whence, and leading to consequences affecting their three lives, made her introduce the two men.

"Mr. Carr," she said, "Mr. FitzHenry. You may be able to get each other partners. Besides, you have an interest in common."

The two men bowed.

"Are you a sailor?" inquired Luke, almost pleasantly. With Willie Carr it was difficult to be stiff and formal.

"Not I; but I'm interested in shipping—not the navy, you know— merchant service. I'm something in the City, like the young man on the omnibus, eh?"

"I'm in the merchant service," answered Luke.

"Ah! What ship?"

"The Croonah."

"Croonah," repeated Carr, hastily scribbling his name on Agatha's programme. "Fine ship; I know her well by name. Know 'em all on paper, you know. I'm an insurance man—what they call a doctor— Lloyd's and all that; missing ships, overdue steamers, hedging and dodging, and the inner walks of marine insurance—that's yours truly. Croonah's a big value, I know."

He looked up keenly over Agatha's engagement card. The look was not quite in keeping with his bluff and open manners. Moreover, a man who is, so to speak, not in keeping with himself is one who requires watching.