For Jacinta by Harold Bindloss

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.