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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.
"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?"
Fitz and she came to stay a month; they had remained twelve. It is often so in Majorca. A number of Spaniards came six hundred years ago nine families; the nine names are there to-day. Fitz had taken D'Erraha on the Minorcan rotas lease, so the old valley, the old house, was his.
Then she fell into a reverie, looking down over the great silent valley that lay between her and the sea. She had been out into the world and had come back to D'Erraha again. In the world she had had a somewhat singular experience. She had never loved a woman, she had never known a woman's love.
"So," he said to himself, as he walked towards his vast home alone, "so the Caballero Challoner is dead. They are passing off the stage one by one." A home where exiled angels might forbear Awhile to moan for paradise. There is a valley far up in the mountains behind the ancient city of Palma the Val d'Erraha. Some thousand years ago the Arabs found this place.
"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."
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.
Fitz had telegraphed to Eve's only living relative, Captain Bontnor, and Fitz it was who stayed on at the Casa d'Erraha until that mariner should arrive; for the doctor was compelled to return to his ship at Port Mahon, and the priest never slept in another but his own little vicarage house.
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.
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.
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