The Count was apparently reflecting.
“I have a compromise to propose,” he said, addressing himself to Eve. “If we place the property in the hands of a third person--you know the value of land in Majorca--to farm and tend; if at the end of each year the profits be divided between us?”
But Eve’s suspicions were aroused, and her woman’s instinct took her further than did Captain Bontnor’s sturdy sense of right and wrong.
“I am afraid,” she said, rising from her chair, “that I must refuse. I--I think I understand why papa always spoke of you as he did. I am very grateful to you. I know now that you have been trying to give me D’Erraha. It was a generous thing to do--a most generous thing. I think people would hardly believe me if I told them. I can only thank you; for I have no possible means of proving to you how deeply I feel it. Somehow”--she paused, with tears and a sad little smile in her eyes--“somehow it is not the gift that I appreciate so much as - as your way of trying to give it.”
The Spaniard spread out his two hands in deprecation.
“My child,” he murmured gently, “I have not another word to say.”
CHAPTER VIII. THE DEAL.
Oh, the little more, and how much it is!
And the little less, and what worlds away!
A howling gale of wind from the south-east, and driving snow and darkness. The light of Cap Grisnez struggling out over the blackness of the Channel, and the two Foreland lights twinkling feebly from their snow-clad heights. A night to turn in one’s bed with a sleepy word of thanksgiving that one has a bed to turn in, and no pressing need to turn out of it.
The smaller fry of Channel shipping have crept into Dungeness or the Downs. Some of them have gone to the bottom. Two of them are breaking up on the Goodwins.