“It is Mr. Brendon, the sleuth!  He has come with news for my master?”

“No, Doria—­no news, worse luck; but I was this way—­down at Plymouth again—­and thought I’d look up Mrs. Pendean and her uncle.  Why d’you call me ’sleuth’?”

“I read story-books of crime in which the detectives are ‘sleuths.’  It is American.  Italians say ‘sbirro,’ England says ’police officer.’”

“How is everybody?”

“Everybody very well.  Time passes; tears dry; Providence watches.”

“And you are still looking for the rich woman to restore the last of the Dorias to his castle?”

Giuseppe laughed, then he shut his eyes and sucked his evil-smelling cigar.

“We shall see as to that.  Man proposes, God disposes.  There is a god called Cupid, Mr. Brendon, who overturns our plans as yonder plough-share overturns the secret homes of beetle and worm.”

Mark’s pulses quickened.  He guessed to what Doria possibly referred and felt concern but no surprise.  The other continued.

“Ambition may succumb before beauty.  Ancestral castles may crumble before the tide of love, as a child’s sand building before the sea.  Too true!”

Doria sighed and looked at Brendon closely.  The Italian stood in a tight-fitting jersey of brown wool, a very picturesque figure against his dark background.  The other had nothing to say and prepared to descend.  He guessed what had happened and was concerned rather with Jenny Pendean than the romantic personality before him.  But that the stranger could still be here, exiled in this lonely spot, told him quite as much as the man’s words.  He was not chained to “Crow’s Nest” with his great ambitions in abeyance for nothing.  Mark, however, pretended to miss the significance of Giuseppe’s confession.

“A good master—­eh!  I expect the old sea wolf is an excellent friend when you know his little ways.”

Doria admitted it.

“He is all that I could wish and he likes me, because I understand him and make much of him.  Every dog is a lion in his own kennel.  Redmayne rules; but what is the good of a home to a man if he does not rule?  We are friends.  Yet, alas, we may not be for long—­when—­”

He broke off abruptly, puffed a villainous cloud of smoke, and went back to his wire netting.  But he turned a moment and spoke again as Brendon proceeded.

“Madonna is at home,” he shouted and Mark understood to whom he referred.

He had reached “Crow’s Nest” in five minutes and it was Jenny Pendean who welcomed him.

“Uncle’s in his tower,” she said.  “I’ll call him in a minute.  But tell me first if there is anything to tell.  I am glad to see you—­very!”

She was excited and her great, misty blue eyes shone.  She seemed more lovely than ever.

“Nothing to report, Mrs. Pendean.  At least—­no, nothing at all.  I’ve exhausted every possibility.  And you—­you have nothing, or you would have let me hear it?”