ck had come to the
conclusion that it would be necessary to scrap the existing machinery
and set up new in its place; and he was anxious to consult Donna Elvira;
but though he learnt that she had sustained no injury from the accident
in the salon, she did not make her appearance until three days had
elapsed. On the evening of the third, as he was sitting on the verandah,
smoking a cigarette after an excellent dinner, and dreaming, as the
exile must dream, however flourishing his position, of the land he had
left, he saw her coming towards the verandah. He sprang to his feet,
and, bare-headed, hastened to meet her and give her his hand to ascend
the steps. She was dressed in black, and her lace mantilla, worn in
Spanish fashion, half-shrouded her face, which was paler and even more
worn than when he had first seen it.

"I hope your Excellency has quite recovered?" he said, as he led her to
a chair and set a cushion for her feet; and he performed the little act
with a courtesy which was as genuine as strange in Derrick, who, like
most men of his class, was not given to knightly attentions; but, every
time he had seen this proud and sorrowful woman, some tender chord had
been touched in his heart and given forth a note of pity and respect. "I
can't blame myself enough for not keeping an eye on that lamp. I hope
you were not burned?"

"No, it was nothing," she said in a low voice, her eyes covered by their
lids, her lips set. "It was the shock, nothing more. I came to speak to
you here because it is cooler, and I wished to see that you
were--comfortable; that is the English word, is it not?"

"Yes," rejoined Derrick, with a laugh. "And it's the most important one
in the language nowadays. Comfort is the one thing everybody goes for;
we've made it our tin god, and we worship it all the time; it's because
money means comfort that we're all out for it."

"And yet you are poor," said her Excellency, musingly. "And you are
happy?"

There was a note of interrogation in her voice, and Derrick checked a
sigh as he shrugged his shoulders, a trick which everybody about the
place possessed, and he was acquiring unconsciously; he was dreading
that, in time, he should come to spread out his hands and gesticulate
like the rest of them.

"Count no man happy till he's dead," he said, a trifle wistfully; and,
at that moment, the scene before him, fair as it was, assumed a dreary
aspect, and he longed for the grimy London streets, the