"Ten thousand dev--," he began, in irritation, then, seeing it was Sparta's Minorcan maid, changed his tune abruptly. If this girl were not divinity itself, she was blessed at least by the service of divinity, and he stared at her hungrily, as if he expected to see a golden collar, with godhead's name upon it, around her throat. He had noticed the wench very little after that first awkward encounter in the corridor--she went about her duties as unobtrusively as a spirit--but tonight she seemed to him, somehow, a precious object, and he spoke to her on impulse. "Is anything wrong?" he said, for now that he came to observe her, she seemed more sombre than usual and her face was a trifle drawn. "Nothing, _señor_," said the girl, quietly. "Supper will be ready in half an hour." She stood aside for him to pass. He lingered, feeling, in the folly of a lover, that her presence might have some sort of augury for him, if he could only puzzle it out. "But--there is something the matter, Caterina," he went on, with vague kindliness, "You really look very tired--and the fever-season's coming on. You should go to Dr. Gentian and have him give you a powder of cinchona." "No, _gracias_, I am quite well, _señor_," said the girl, and sucked in her breath. A dark glow came into her eyes for a second, like the soul of a flame in an obscured mirror, and died again. For some reason, Andrew felt, momentarily, as he had that evening in the corridor when her footsteps had died away so suddenly and left him alone in the very belly of night. The sensation was so acute that he almost put out a hand to steady himself against an assault of shadows. Then he remembered. "Of course," he said rather aimlessly, "Of course--but still, you don't look very well, Caterina,--and really, now, if you went to--" "I am quite well," the girl repeated steadily, but he saw a sob rise in her throat. It broke now, and tore her. "But the Minorcans will never have their lands, now--the Minorcans will never have their lands!" she cried, passionately, in a deep, shaken voice, and then pushing him aside with a child's gesture of impotent pain, ran sobbing down the stairs. Andrew gazed after her helplessly, reflecting that Minorcans were very peculiar. One got just so far with them--and then one came up against a blind wall of silence or an inexplicable grief. Her words were meaningless, of course, but coming, as they did, after Sebastian's talk about the thunder, they jarred him and set the pattern of the evening awry. He went to his room with a prickle in his mind, and was not pleased, when he got there, to hear, through the open window, the mutter of other voices in irritated discussion. He was about to go out and silence the debate--the room next his was a store-room and generally only frequented by servants--when the voices rose higher, and he caught one sentence clearly.