"I have seen him," put in Fitz, "at Mrs. Harrington's often." The girl nodded her head with a quaint little assumption of shrewdness and deep suspicion. "My father admired him--I do not know why. And pitied him intensely--I do not know why." "He was always very nice to me," answered Fitz, "but I never understood him." Talking thus they forgot the flight of time. It sometimes happens thus in youth. And the huge clock in the stable yard striking ten aroused Eve suddenly to the lateness of the hour. "I must go," she said. "I am glad you told me about--Luke. I feel as if I knew you better and understood--a little more. Good-night." She left him on the terrace, and walked sorrowfully away to the house which could never be the same again. Fitz watched her slight young form disappear through an open doorway, and then he became lost in the contemplation of the distant sea, lying still and glass-like in the moonlight. He was looking to the north, and it happened that from that same point of the compass there was coming towards him the good steamer Bellver, on whose deck stood a little shock-headed man--Captain Bontnor. There is a regular service of steamers to and from the Island of Majorca to the mainland, and, in addition, steamers make voyages when pressure of traffic may demand. The Bellver was making one of these supplemental journeys, and her arrival was not looked for at Palma. Eve and Fitz were having breakfast alone in the gloomy room overshadowed by the trailing wings of the Angel of Death, when the servant announced a gentleman to see the senorita. The senorita requested that the gentleman might approach, and presently there stood in the doorway the quaintest little figure imaginable. Captain Bontnor, with a certain sense of the fitness of things, had put on his best clothes for this occasion, and it happened that the most superior garment in his wardrobe was a thick pilot-jacket, which stood out from his square person with solid angularity. He had brushed his hair very carefully, applying water to compass a smoothness which had been his life-long and hitherto unattained aim. His shock hair--red turning to grey--stood up four inches from his honest, wrinkled face. It was unfortunate that his best garments should have been purchased for the amenities of a northern climate. His trousers were as stiff as his jacket, and he wore a decorous black silk tie as large as a counterpane. He stood quaintly bowing in the doorway, his bright blue eyes veiled with shyness and a pathetic dumb self-consciousness. "Please come in," said Eve in Spanish, quite at a loss as to who this might be. Then Fitz had an inspiration. Something of the sea seemed to be wafted from the older to the younger sailor. "Are you Captain Bontnor?" he asked, rising from the table. "Yes, sir, yes! That's my name!" He stood nervously in the doorway, mistrusting the parquet-floor, mistrusting himself, mistrusting everything.