Jacinta smiled as she unfolded her fan. "I have my moments of relaxation, and can be sentimental now and then. Sentiment, you see, is in the atmosphere here. One feels mediæval, as if all the old things of the olden days had come back again, miracles, and crowned virgins that fell from the clouds, valour and knightliness, and man's faith in woman. No doubt there were more, but I don't remember them. They have, of course, gone out of fashion long ago."
She spoke lightly, but there was a trace of bitterness in her voice that Muriel noticed.
"One doesn't find that atmosphere in the book. The men who went with Cortez were cruel as well as brutal."
"They certainly seem to have been so, which is one reason why they interest me. You see, the Spaniards seized these islands a little before they discovered Cuba, and I wanted to find out what the men who built these beautiful homes here were really like when they had work on hand. As one would have fancied, the grave, ceremonious Don who posed as a most punctilious gentleman at home became a very different kind of person when he went to Mexico. The original Adam showed up there. It's a useful lesson to any one silly enough to idealise the man she is going to marry."
Muriel flushed a little. "I think I know what you mean. Mr. Austin tried to convey the same impression when he told me what they were doing on board the Cumbria. Still, he went a good deal further than you do. He made me understand that, though there are things that could only be done rudely and almost brutally, it was often only what was ideal in the men who did them that sent them to the work at all."
"Yes," said Jacinta drily. "I fancy he would do it rather well. Mr. Austin is not much of an artist, and would never be a great one; but he has the capacity of understanding, or, perhaps, I should say imagining things. Still, the pity is that he usually stops there. He doesn't want to do them, and though he once very rashly tried, he was not long in discovering that the work was a good deal too hard for him. I really think you should be glad there is a trace of primitive—we'll be candid, and call it brutality—in Harry Jefferson."
Again the colour showed in Muriel's face. "It isn't," she said. "It's only natural forcefulness; but we needn't go into that. I wonder why you are so angry with Mr. Austin?"
"Angry?" and Jacinta raised her brows. "Oh, dear no! Still, there are points on which he did not quite come up to my expectations, and after the admonitions I have wasted on him I feel a little annoyed with him."
"Still, isn't that a trifle unreasonable? What could he have done that he hasn't done? He was ill and worn out, but he wouldn't even stay a day after he got the money."
"What money?" and there was a sharp insistency in Jacinta's tone.