g were, he did not want to seem jealous.
Montesma was there as the very incarnation of some experiences in Mr.
Smithson's past career, and he dared not object to the man's presence.

And so the summer day wore on. They had the yacht all to themselves that
evening, for the racing yachts were fulfilling engagements in other
waters, and the gay company of pleasure-seekers had not yet fully
assembled. They were dropping in one by one, all the evening, and Cowes
roads grew fuller of life with every hour of the summer night.

Mr. Smithson and his guests dined in the saloon, a snug little party of
four, and sat long over dessert, deep into the dusk; and they talked of
all things under heaven, things frivolous, things grave, but most of all
about that fair, strange world in far-off southern waters, the sunny
islands of the Caribbean Sea, and the dreamy, luxurious life of that
tropical clime, half Spanish, half Oriental, wholly independent of
European conventionalities. Lesbia listened, enchanted by the picture.
What were Park Lane palaces, and Berkshire manors, the petty splendours
of the architect and the upholsterer, weighed against a world in which
all nature is on a grander scale? Mr. Smithson might give her fine
houses and costly upholstery; but only the Tropic of Cancer could give
her larger and brighter stars, a world of richer colouring, a land of
perpetual summer, nights luminous with fire-flies, gardens in which the
fern and the cactus were as forest trees, and where humming-birds
flashed among the foliage like living flowers; nay, where the flowers
themselves took the forms of the animal world and seemed instinct with
life and motion.

'Yes,' said Mr. Smithson, with his gentlemanlike drawl, 'Spanish America
and the West Indies are delightful places to talk about. There are so
many things one leaves out of the picture--thieves, niggers, jiggers,
snakes, mosquitoes, yellow Jack, creeping, crawling creatures of all
kinds. I always feel very glad I have been to South America.'

'Why?'

'In order that I may never go there again,' replied Mr. Smithson.

'I was beginning to hope you would take me there some day,' said Lesbia.

'Never again, no, not even for your sake. No man should ever leave
Europe after he is five-and-thirty; indeed, I doubt if after that age he
should venture beyond the Mediterranean. That is the sea of
civilisation. Anything outside it means barbarism.'

'I hope we are going to travel by-and-by,