Miss Gascoyne looked at him curiously. She had not met a young man of this type before, and was not sure that she approved of him. She also fancied that he was a trifle egotistical, which he certainly was not, and it never occurred to her that he was merely rambling on for her entertainment because he felt it his duty.
"Don't you think that one should always have faith in one's prescriptions and act upon it?" said her aunt. "I endeavour to do so when I dose the village people who come to me."
Austin laughed. "Well," he said, "you see, I haven't any, and, perhaps if I had, it would be a little rough on others. Still, as a matter of fact, they do get better—that is, most of them."
Miss Gascoyne looked startled. "Is it right to abuse the ignorant people's credulity like that?" she said, and stopped a trifle awkwardly, while a little twinkle crept into Jacinta's eyes.
"Mr. Austin hasn't really killed anybody yet," she said. "You haven't told us what you think of Teneriffe, Muriel."
Miss Gascoyne turned her face astern, and there was appreciation, and something deeper than that, in her blue eyes, which had seen very little of the glory of this world as yet. High overhead the great black wall of the Cañadas cut, a tremendous ebony rampart, against the luminous blue, and beyond it the peak's white cone gleamed ethereally above its wrappings of fleecy mist. Beneath, the Atlantic lay a sheet of glimmering turquoise in the lee of the island, and outside of that there was a blinding blaze of sunlight on the white-topped sea.
"It is beautiful—wonderfully beautiful," she said, with a little tremble in her voice. "Isn't it sad that such a country should be steeped in superstition?"
Austin felt the last observation jar upon him, for he knew that the inhabitants of that land would, in respect of sobriety and morality, compare very favourably with those of several more enlightened places he was acquainted with at home, and that was going far enough for him. Still, he could defer to another's convictions when they were evidently sincere, and it seemed to him that Jacinta's warning glance was a trifle unnecessary. There was, however, an interruption just then, for a steward appeared with a laden tray at the door of the captain's room.
"Doesn't Don Erminio take his comida in the saloon?" asked Jacinta.
"No," said Austin. "Not when we have English ladies on board. He's a different man, you know, and some of them will insist on talking Spanish to him. It's a little trying to have to admit you don't understand your own language."