Mrs. Hatherly smiled reassuringly. "My dear," she said, "I think you do not quite understand all that man is yet. In spite of the climate he and his comrade are going to be successful."
Then she turned, and Jacinta rose, for the Señora Anasona and Muriel were coming down the stairway.
CHAPTER XXI
THE PICTURES
Austin had been gone a fortnight when Jacinta and Muriel Gascoyne sat under the lee of the Estremedura's deck-house one morning, on their way to Las Palmas. Above them the mastheads swung languidly athwart a cloudless sweep of blue, and the sea frothed in white incandescence about the lurching hull below as the little yacht-like steamer reeled eastwards with a rainbow in the spray that whirled about her bows. Astern of her the Peak's white cone gleamed above its wrappings of fleecy mist, and ahead on the far horizon Grand Canary swam a purple cloud.
Jacinta was dressed ornately in the latest English mode, and it seemed to Muriel that she had put on conventional frivolity along with her attire. Indeed, Muriel had noticed a change in her companion during the last few days, one that was marked by outbreaks of flippancy and somewhat ironical humour. An English naval officer leaned upon the back of her chair, and a tourist of the same nationality stood balancing himself against the rolling with his hand on the rail that ran along the deck-house. The latter was looking down at Macallister, who sat upon the deck with a little box in front of him.
"I brought up the two or three sketches ye were asking for, Mr. Coulstin," he said. "The saloon's full of jabbering Spaniards, and the messroom's over hot."
The tourist screwed the glass he wore more tightly into his eye. "If they're equal to the one I saw in the N. W. A. store I may be open to make a purchase," he said. "I think you told me you were acquainted with the artist, Miss Brown?"
"I believe I did," said Jacinta, who was conscious that Macallister was watching her languidly. "You will, however, no doubt be able to judge his pictures for yourself."
Coulston made a little humourous gesture. "I am not a painter, and I could scarcely venture to call myself a connoisseur. Still, I buy a picture or two occasionally, and the one I mentioned rather took my fancy. A sketch or two of that kind would make a pleasant memento."