"How is everybody?"
"Everybody very well. Time passes; tears dry; Providence watches."
"And you are still looking for the rich woman to restore the last of the Dorias to his castle?"
Giuseppe laughed, then he shut his eyes and sucked his evil-smelling cigar.
"We shall see as to that. Man proposes, God disposes. There is a god called Cupid, Mr. Brendon, who overturns our plans as yonder plough-share overturns the secret homes of beetle and worm."
Mark's pulses quickened. He guessed to what Doria possibly referred and felt concern but no surprise. The other continued.
"Ambition may succumb before beauty. Ancestral castles may crumble before the tide of love, as a child's sand building before the sea. Too true!"
Doria sighed and looked at Brendon closely. The Italian stood in a tight-fitting jersey of brown wool, a very picturesque figure against his dark background. The other had nothing to say and prepared to descend. He guessed what had happened and was concerned rather with Jenny Pendean than the romantic personality before him. But that the stranger could still be here, exiled in this lonely spot, told him quite as much as the man's words. He was not chained to "Crow's Nest" with his great ambitions in abeyance for nothing. Mark, however, pretended to miss the significance of Giuseppe's confession.
"A good master—eh! I expect the old sea wolf is an excellent friend when you know his little ways."
Doria admitted it.