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"Come down to my club and have a cigar!" The Count stood under a yellow lamp enveloped in his fur-lined coat, looking with heavy, deep-browed eyes at his young companion. Fitz paused. The Count had been kind to Eve. Fitz had noticed his manner towards the girl. He liked Cipriani de Lloseta as many did- -without knowing why. "Thanks," he said, "I should like to."
No breath of dishonour has reached the name of De Lloseta de Mallorca. I got her out of Majorca, and my old friend Challoner set himself the task of silencing the gossips. But I found that I had to leave Lloseta for the name's sake I quitted my home." He spread out his hands with a patient gesture of resignation. "Such has been my life," he went on.
"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 "
Which of us knows his own weakness? There was a man connected with Mrs. Harrington's life, one of the contractors in black and white, who had found out this effect of a brown face and a blue coat upon a woman otherwise immovable. This man, Cipriani de Lloseta, who contemplated life, as it were, from a quiet corner of the dress circle, kept his knowledge for his own use.
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.
"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.
"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.
Lloseta, a bare, brown village, standing on the hillside, as if it had economically crept up there among the pines, so as to leave available for cultivation every inch of the wonderful soil of the plain. Below, the vast fertile plateau, tilled like a garden, lies to the westward, while to the east the rising undulations terminate in the bare uplands of Inca.
Olive-trees cover the plain like an army, trees that were planted by the Moors a thousand years ago. Amid the rugged heights of the mountains, here at their highest, and in the fastness of a gorge, lies Lloseta itself.
Match-making old women are the devil." He paused and attended to his cigar. The steamer passed within a hundred yards of them. The Englishman nodded towards it. "Steamer's going to Majorca," he said. Lloseta nodded his head. "Yes," he answered gravely, "I know." "I came down to see it off!" The Spaniard looked at him sharply. "Why?" he asked.
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