“Thank you,” he said, holding out his hand. “I will not keep you from your work. You are doing a better action than you are aware of.”
He took the frail fingers in his grasp for a second and turned to go. Before the door closed behind him John Craik was at work again.
So Eve Challoner’s work passed through Cipriani de Lloseta’s hand, and that nobleman came into her life from another point. It would seem that in whichsoever direction she turned, the Mallorcan was waiting for her with his grave persistence, his kindly determination to watch over her, to exercise that manly control over her life which is really the chief factor of feminine happiness on earth--if women only knew it. For all through Nature there are qualities given to the male for the sole advantage of the female, and the beasts of the forest rise up in silent protest against the nonsense that is talked to-day of woman’s place in the world. We may consider the beasts of the field to advantage, for through all the chances and changes of education, of female emancipation, and the subjection of the weaker sort of man, there will continue to run to the end of time the one grand principle that the male is there to protect the female and the female to care for her young.
Cipriani de Lloseta thus late in life seemed to have found an object. Eve Challoner, while bringing back the past with a flood of recollections - for she seemed to carry the air of Mallorca with her--had so far brought him to the present that for the first time since thirty years and more he began to be interested in the life that was around him.
He suspected--nay, he almost knew--that Eve had written the article in the Commentator which had attracted so much attention. John Craik had to a certain extent baffled him. He had called on the editor of the great periodical in the hope of gleaning some detail - some little scrap of information which would confirm his suspicion - but he had come away with nothing of value excepting the promise that the printed matter should pass through his hands before it reached the public.
Even if he was mistaken, and this proved after all to be the work of Mrs. Harrington, the fact of the proof being offered to his scrutiny was in itself an important safeguard. This, however, was only a secondary possibility. He knew that Eve had written this thing, and he wished to have the opportunity of correcting one or two small mistakes which he anticipated, and which he felt that he himself alone could rectify.
In the meantime John Craik was scribbling a letter to Eve in his minute caligraphy.
“DEAR MADAM” (he wrote), “Your first article is, I am glad to say, attracting considerable attention. It is absolutely necessary that I should see you, with a view of laying down plans for further contributions. Please let me know how this can be arranged. Yours truly,
“JOHN CRAIK.”
And at the same time another man, to whom all these things were of paramount importance--to whom all that touched Eve’s life was as if it touched his own--was reading the Commentator. Fitz, on his way home from the Mediterranean, to fill the post of navigating-lieutenant to a new ironclad at that time fitting out at Chatham, bought the Commentator from an enterprising newsagent given to maritime venture in Plymouth harbour. The big steamer only stayed long enough to discharge her mails, and Fitz being a sailor did not go ashore. Instead, he sat on a long chair on deck and read the Commentator. He naturally concluded that at last Cipriani de Lloseta had acceded to John Craik’s wish.
The Ingham-Bakers had come home from Malta and were at this time staying with Mrs. Harrington in London. Agatha had of late taken to reading the newspapers somewhat exhaustively. She read such columns as are usually passed over by the majority of womankind--such as naval intelligence and those uninteresting details of maritime affairs printed in small type, and stated to emanate from Lloyd’s, wherever that vague source may be.