The Count nodded.
“Yes,” he said, “that is like Eve; she would think of such things.”
He went up to the horse, patted it, measured the length of the stirrup-leather, and then turned to Fitz.
“I will go to Lloseta,” he said. “It is only natural after forty years. I will be with you by seven o’clock to-night at D’Erraha.”
Fitz did not offer to accompany him, and Cipriani de Lloseta rode that strange ride alone; unknown, an outcast in his own land, he rode through the most fertile valley in the world, of which every tree was dear to him; and no man knew his thoughts. The labourers in the fields, men and women, brown, sunburnt, half Moorish, wholly simple and natural, paused in their toil and looked wonderingly at the lonely horseman; the patient mules walking their ceaseless round at the Moorish wells blinked lazily at him; the eagles of Lloseta swept slowly round in a great circle far above the old castle, as they had swept in his childhood, and he looked up at them with his strange patient smile. He pushed the great olive-wood gate open and passed into the terraced garden, all overgrown, neglected, mournful. It was a strange home-coming, with no one near to see.
He spent the whole day at Lloseta engaged in the very practical work of employing men to labour at the garden and in the house. It was, he said, his intention to come back to his “possession,” as these Majorcan country houses are called, to inhabit it the larger part of the year, and to pass the remaining winter months at his palace in Palma.
In the afternoon he mounted his horse, and in the evening, as has been said, he reached D’Erraha.
A servant must have been watching his approach, for the large door was thrown open and he rode into the patio. Fitz was here to welcome him; and behind him Eve, with Henry Cyprian in her arms. No one spoke. It was rather singular. The Count dismounted. He took off his hat and held it in the Spanish mode in his hand while he shook hands with Fitz and Eve. He looked round the patio. He noted the old marble well, yellow with stupendous age, the orange trees clustering over it, the palms and the banana trees, then he smiled at Eve.
“After many years,” he said.
There was a little pause.