I must pay my friend the compliment of saying that he has made good use of the data I have given him, and he has dealt as leniently as he could with my little failings.
I have spent a very pleasant two years, and I gather from Charlotte that she is as happy as I am. Perhaps, after one of our yearly dinners we will decide to take up again the life which was interrupted by the visit of Uncle Jasper. I hope not, however.
It is May now, a month which I always spend in the little cottage at Tremoor. Their Majesties the King and Queen of San Pietro, travelling as Mr. and Mrs. Baxendale, come to Cornwall also and spend a week each year. They will be here in a few days now, and with them they are bringing the Crown Prince, as sturdy a little Estrato as ever graced a cradle. I saw him last January, for I spend the winters in the delightful climate of Corbo. I do not stay at the palace, but find it more to my taste to take a suite of rooms at the Imperial, that new hotel which faces the bay near the Casino.
I rode out to Casa Luzo a few days before I last left the island, and it was with very mixed feelings that I gazed on the stucco porch and the little garden. I thought of Galva and Armand, of old Pieto and Teresa, and the ruffian who was wounded in the leg. The place has been done up, and is, I think, in the possession of a wealthy fruit merchant of Madrid.
Pieto and Teresa were well when I last saw them. They keep a small inn on the Alcador Road, and by Teresa's careful watching of the stock, the worthy pair manage to wring from the business a fair living. They receive also a yearly sum from the Royal Pensions list.
Anna Paluda resides at the palace. I often find myself wondering what business it was that really brought her to London with me. In my pocket-book is an old and much folded cutting from the _Daily Mail_ which has put strange fancies into my head. One of these days I will show Anna the cutting and watch those great black eyes as she reads it. It is a report of an inquest and goes--
"_Yesterday Mr. Paxton, the coroner of St. Pancras, held an inquest on the body of the man Gabriel who was found dead in the first-floor room of a boarding-house in Dorrington Street._