"Clever girl. Guessed it in once. I just opened a credit for you down at the bank in Las Palmas for £500 to be going on with. That's for chocolate, and hairpins, and a mantillina, and the latest thing in Spanish slippers. I say, Laura, you must get a pair of those tan ones, with the laces tied in a bow just down over the toe. And if you don't go through the lot whilst I'm away squaring mine matters up in England, I shall take you solemnly round the shops when I come back here, and buy you a trousseau of all the ugliest and most unbecoming garments they have in stock." "You are good to me, dear. But I can never spend all that." "If you've any balance you find unwieldy, buy Cascaes a smile with it, if you can find one that will fit. No, seriously, old lady, you will be marrying a rich man, although you did not know it when you took him, and you may as well get used to spending. It's no use for us preparing to save." "No use preparing to save," poor Laura repeated miserably to herself. "There will be no--no one except ourselves to look forward to." But she said nothing of this aloud. She just thanked him, and snuggled in to his shoulder and patted his sleeve. Far away over the corner of the isle a steamer hooted in the harbor of the Isleta, and the sound came to them dimly through the foliage plants. Carter looked at his watch. "Hullo, I must go, or the criminal who drives my tartana will flog that poor beast of a mule to death in his effort to catch the boat. So now, Miss Slade, just please give me a sample of your best good-bye." Twilight does not linger in the summer months, even so far north as Grand Canary. The sun was balanced in lurid splendor on the rocky backbone of the isle as Carter said his last words of farewell, making the dead volcanoes look as though at a whim they could spring once more into scarlet life. It was dark when he got on the road, and the evening chill rode in on the Trade. The mouse-colored tartana mule sneezed as he pressed his galled shoulders into the collar. Carter wedged himself in a corner of the carriage and resolutely looked on life with a reckless gayety. After all, what was this ache called Love? To the devil with it! Hereafter he would eat, and drink, and work, especially work, and--well, Laura was a good sort, and he intended to play the game, and please her. He had given his word to Laura, he forgot exactly why, but he had given it, and that was enough. For good or evil he was one of those dogged Englishmen who keep to a promise that had once been given.