"Yes. So I learnt. That indeed is my excuse for intruding myself upon your notice at this time. I surmised that my poor friend's affairs had been left in some confusion. He was too thorough a gentleman to be competent in affairs. I thought that perhaps my small influence and my diminutive knowledge of Majorcan law--the Roman law, in point of fact--might be of some use to you." "Thank you," she answered; "I think we settled everything before we left the island, although we did not see Senor Pena, your lawyer. I--the Casa d'Erraha belongs to you!" she added, suddenly descending to feminine reiteration. "Prove it," said the Count quietly. "I cannot do that." He shrugged his shoulders with a smile. "Then," he said, "I am afraid you cannot shift your responsibility to my shoulders." The girl looked at him with puzzled young eyes. He stood before her, dignified, eminently worthy of the great name he bore--a solitary, dark-eyed, inscrutable man, whose whole being subtly suggested hopelessness and an empty life. She shook her head. "But I cannot accept the Casa d'Erraha on those terms." The Count drew forward a chair and sat down. "Listen," he said, with an explanatory forefinger upheld. "Three generations ago two men made a verbal agreement in respect to the estate of the Val d'Erraha. To-day no one knows what that agreement was. It may have been the ordinary 'rotas' of Minorca. It may not. In those days the English held Minorca; my ancestor may therefore have been indebted to your great-grandfather, for we have some small estates in Minorca. You know what the islands are to-day. 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. I do not mind telling you that the smallness of that proportion does away with the argument that the agreement was the ordinary 'rotas' of the Baleares. We know nothing--we can prove nothing. If you claimed the estate I might possibly wrest it from you--not by proof, but merely because the insular prejudice against a foreigner would militate against you in a Majorcan court of law. I cannot legally force you to hold the estate of the Val d'Erraha. I can only ask you as the daughter of one of my best friends to accept the benefit of a very small doubt." Eve hesitated. What woman would not? Captain Bontnor set down his cup very gravely on the table.