suggested hopelessness and an empty life. She shook her head.

"But I cannot accept the Casa d'Erraha on those terms."

The Count drew forward a chair and sat down.

"Listen," he said, with an explanatory forefinger upheld. "Three
generations ago two men made a verbal agreement in respect to the
estate of the Val d'Erraha. To-day no one knows what that agreement
was. It may have been the ordinary 'rotas' of Minorca. It may not.
In those days the English held Minorca; my ancestor may therefore
have been indebted to your great-grandfather, for we have some small
estates in Minorca. You know what the islands are to-day. They are
two hundred years behind Northern Europe. What must they have been
a hundred and twenty years ago? We have no means of finding out
what passed between your great-grandfather and my grandfather. We
only know that three generations of Challoners have lived in the
Casa d'Erraha, paying to the Counts of Lloseta a certain proportion
of the product of the estate. I do not mind telling you that the
smallness of that proportion does away with the argument that the
agreement was the ordinary 'rotas' of the Baleares. We know
nothing--we can prove nothing. If you claimed the estate I might
possibly wrest it from you--not by proof, but merely because the
insular prejudice against a foreigner would militate against you in
a Majorcan court of law. I cannot legally force you to hold the
estate of the Val d'Erraha. I can only ask you as the daughter of
one of my best friends to accept the benefit of a very small doubt."

Eve hesitated. What woman would not?