“No.”
She turned the letter and read aloud.
“I saw Craik just before I left. He was, I think, in better health. His mind is much too brilliant, his brain too active, his humour too keen to be that of a sick man. When I told him your good news he quite forgot to be rheumatic. ‘Glad to hear it, glad to hear it,’ he said. ‘She was much too good to be a mere writing woman.’ By the way, I imagine Eve never learnt that all the Spanish articles, except the first, passed through my hands as well as Craik’s before publication. I knew who wrote them, and am still one of their profoundest admirers, but, like John Craik, I am well content that the gifted author should turn her attention to other things, notably to my godson, to whom salutations. Did either of you ever meet young Lord Seahampton, an excellent fellow, with the appearance of a cleanly groom and the heart of a true knight? He was killed while riding a steeplechase last week. I regret him deeply. He was one of my few friends.”
Eve laid the letter down with a little sigh, a species of sigh which she reserved for Cipriani de Lloseta.
“He is a nineteenth-century Quixote,” she said. “No one ever knows what good he may be doing.”
Then they fell to talking of this man, of what he had done and what he had left undone. They guessed at what he had suffered, and of the suffering which he had spared others they knew a little; but of his own feelings they were ignorant, his motives they only knew in part. His life had been lived out to a certain extent before them, but they knew nothing of it; it was a mere superficies without perspective, and Eve, woman-like, wanted to put a background to it.
“But why,” she persisted, from the height of her own happiness, which had apparently been so easy to reach, “why does he lead such a lonely, gloomy life? Why has he so few friends? Why does he not come and live at Lloseta instead of in the gloomy palace in the Calle de la Paz?”
“His life is all whys,” answered Fitz; “it is one big note of interrogation. He said that some day he would tell us; no doubt he will.”
“Yes; perhaps so.”
Eve reflected, and again she indulged in a short sigh.