Part 23 (2/2)

It was a small thing that stood between these two men, preventing them from frankly co-operating in the scheme which both had at heart. It was nothing but the tone of a girl's voice, the studied silence of a girl's eyes, which had once been eloquent.

It was getting late. A discreet clock on the mantelpiece declared the hour of midnight in deliberate cathedral chime. Fitz looked up, but he did not move. He liked Cipriani de Lloseta. He had been prepared to do so, and now he had gone further than he had intended.

He wanted him to go on talking about Eve, for he thirsted in his dumbly enduring way for more details of her life. But he would not revert to the subject. Rather than that he would go on enduring.

While they were sitting thus in silence, the only other occupant of the room--the man with the pain-drawn face--rose from his seat, helping his legs with unsteady hands upon either arm of the chair.

He threw the paper down carelessly on the table, and came across the room towards the Count de Lloseta. He was a surprisingly tall man when he stood up; for in his chair he seemed to sink into himself.

His hair was grey--rather long and straggly--his eyes hazel, looking through spectacles wildly. His cheeks were very hollow, his chin square and bony. Here was a man of keen nerves and quick to suffer.

”Well,” he said to Lloseta, ”I haven't seen you for some time.”

”I've been away.”

The tall man looked down at him with the singular scrutiny already mentioned.

”Spain?”

”Spain.”

He turned away with a little nod, but stopped before he had gone many paces.

”And when are you going to write those sketches of Spanish life?” he asked, with a cheery society laugh, which sounded rather incongruous. ”Never, I suppose. Well, the loss is mine. Good- night, Lloseta.”

He went away without looking back.

”Do you know who that is?” the Count asked Fitz when the door was closed.

Fitz had risen, with his eye on the clock.

”No. But I seem to know his face.”

The Count looked up with a smile.

”You ought to. That was John Craik.”

CHAPTER XVI. BROKEN.

The Powers Behind the world that make our griefs our gains.

The small town of Somarsh, in Suffolk, consists of one street running up from the so-called harbour. At one end is the railway- station; at the other the harbour and the sea, and that is Somarsh.

There are records that in days gone by--in the days of east coast prosperity--there was a Mayor of Somarsh, or Southmarsh, as it was then written. But Ichabod!

All Somarsh was in the street one morning after Fitz had gone to sea again, and those of the women who were not talking loudly were weeping softly. The boats were not in yet, but the weather was fine, and the still, saffron sea was dotted with brown sails. There was nothing wrong with the boats.

No; the trouble was on sh.o.r.e, as it mostly is. It came not from the sea, but from men. It was pinned upon the door of Merton's Bank in the High Street. Its form was unintelligible, for the wording of the notice was mostly outside the Suffolk vocabulary. There was something written in a clerkly hand about the withdrawal of ”financial facilities necessitating a stoppage of payment pending reconstruction.”

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