"My dear," he said, "I don't quite understand what this foreign gentleman and you are talkin' about. But if it's trouble, dear, if it's trouble--just let me try." CHAPTER VII. IN THE STREET OF THE PEACE. Measure thy life by loss instead of gain, Not by the wine drunk, but the wine poured forth. "MY DEAR MISS CHALLONER,--I learn that you are in Barcelona, and at the same time I find with some indignation that my lawyer in Mallorca, with a deplorable excess of zeal, has been acting without my orders in respect to the property of the Val d'Erraha. I hasten to place myself and possessions at your disposition, and take the liberty of writing to request an interview, instead of calling on you at your hotel, for reasons which you will readily understand, knowing as you do the gossiping ways of hotels. As an old friend of your father's, and one who moved and lived in neighbourly intercourse with him before your birth, and before the deplorable death of your mother, I now waive ceremony, and beg that you and your uncle will come and take tea with me this afternoon at my humble abode in the 'Calle de la Paz.'--Believe me, dear Miss Challoner, yours very sincerely, "CIPRIANI DE LLOSETA DE MALLORCA." Eve read this letter in her room in the Hotel of the Four Nations at Barcelona. She had only been on the mainland twenty-four hours when it was delivered to her by a servant of the Count's, who came to her apartment and delivered it into her own hands, as is the custom of Spanish servants. Eve Challoner had grown older during the last few days. She had been brought face to face with life as it really is, and not as we dream it in the dreams of youth. She was not surprised to receive this letter, although she had no idea that the Count de Lloseta was in Spain. But the varying emotions of the last week had, as it were, undermined the confident hopefulness with which we look forward when we are young, and sometimes when we are old, to the management of our own lives here below. She was beginning to understand certain terms which she had heard applied to human existence, and to which she had hitherto attached no special meaning as relating to herself. More especially did she understand at this time that life may be compared to a stream, for she was vaguely conscious of drifting she knew not whither. Fitz had come suddenly into her life; Captain Bontnor had come into it; and now this man, Cipriani de Lloseta, seemed to be asserting his right to come into it too. And she did not know quite what to do with them all. She had never, in the quiet, dreamy days of her youth, pictured a life with any of these men in it, and the future was suddenly tremendous, unfathomable. There were vast possibilities in it of misery, of danger, of difficulty; and behind these a vague, new feeling of a possible happiness far exceeding the happiness of her peaceful childhood.