sail after dinner.'

Mr. Smithson came back to the yacht just in time to dress for dinner.
Don Gomez excused himself from putting on his dress suit. He was going
to sail the yacht himself, and he was dressed for his work,
picturesquely, in white duck trousers, white silk shirt, and black
velvet shooting jacket. He dined with the permission of the ladies, in
this costume, in which he looked so much handsomer than in the livery of
polite life. He had a red scarf tied round his waist, and when at his
work by-and-by, he wore a little red silk cap, just stuck lightly on his
dark hair. The dinner to-day was all animation and even excitement, very
different from the languorous calm of yesterday. Lesbia seemed a new
creature. She talked and laughed and flashed and sparkled as she had
never yet done within Mr. Smithson's experience. He contemplated the
transformation with wonder not unmixed with suspicion. Never for him had
she been so brilliant--never in response to his glances had her violet
eyes thus kindled, had her smile been so entrancingly sweet. He watched
Montesma, but in him he could find no fault. Even jealousy could hardly
take objection to the Spaniard's manner to Lady Lesbia. There was not a
look, not a word that hinted at a private understanding between them, or
which seemed to convey deeper meanings than the common language of
society. No, there was no ground for fault-finding; and yet Smithson was
miserable. He knew this man of old, and knew his influence over women.

Mr. Smithson handed over the management of the yacht without a murmer,
albeit he pretended to be able to sail her himself, and was in the habit
of taking the command for a couple of hours on a sunny afternoon, much
to the amusement of skipper and crew. But Montesma was a sailor born and
bred--the salt keen breath of the sea had been the first breath in his
nostrils--he had managed his light felucca before he was twelve years
old, had sailed every inch of the Caribbean Sea, and northward to the
furthermost of the Bahamas before he was fifteen. He had lived more on
the water than on the land in that wild boyhood of his; a boyhood in
which books and professors had played but small part. Montesma's school
had been the world, and beautiful women his only professors. He had
learnt arithmetic from the transactions of bubble companies; modern
languages from the lips of the women who loved him. He was a crack shot,
a perfect swordsman, a reckless horseman,