"You must remember your position," she continued. "These are very democratic days, when silly people think that all men are equal. A lady is nevertheless still a lady, and a gentleman a gentleman, though one does not often meet them. I wish you to come and live with me." Eve's dark eyes flashed suddenly. She glanced at her uncle, and said nothing. "A girl with money is a ready dupe to designing persons," added Mrs. Harrington. "I am saved that danger, for I have no money," replied Eve. "Nonsense, child! I know the value of land in Mallorca. I see already that you are being deceived." She glanced significantly towards the captain, who was again smiling blandly. "The matter has been fully gone into," explained Eve, "by competent persons. The Val d'Erraha does not belong to me. It was held by my father only on 'rotas'--the Minorcan form of lease--and it has now been returned to the proprietor." Mrs. Harrington's keen face dropped. She prided herself upon being a woman of business, and as such had always taken a deep interest in the affairs of other people. It is to be presumed that women have a larger mental grasp than men. They crave for more business when they are business-like, and thus by easy steps descend to mere officiousness. Eve's story was so very simple and, to the ears of one who had known her father, so extremely likely, that Mrs. Harrington had for the moment nothing to say. She knew the working of the singular system on which land is to this day held in tenure in Majorca and Minorca, and there was no reason to suppose that there was any mistake or deception respecting the estate of the Val d'Erraha. A dramatist of considerable talent, who is not sufficiently studied in these modern times, has said that a man in his time plays many parts. He left it to be understood that a woman plays only one. The business woman is the business woman all through her life--she is never the charitable lady, even for a moment. Mrs. Harrington had wished to have the bringing out of a beautiful heiress. She had no desire to support a penniless orphan. The matter had, in her mind, taken the usual form of a contract in black and white. Mrs. Harrington would supply position and a suitable home--Eve was to have paid for her own dresses--chosen by the elder contractor--and to have filled gracefully the gratifying, if hollow, position of a young person of means looking for a husband. Mrs. Harrington's business habits had, in fact, kept her fully alive to the advantages likely to accrue to herself; and the small fact that Eve was penniless reduced these advantages to a mythical reward in the hereafter. And business people have not time to think of the hereafter. It is possible that simple old Captain Bontnor in part divined these thoughts in the set grey eyes, the grey wrinkled face.