Next day when he returned to the terrace, the window was a little ajar, and he enjoyed a view of the lady’s shoulder, as she sat patiently sewing and all unconscious of his presence. On the next, he had scarce appeared when the window opened, and the Señorita tripped forth into the sunlight, in a morning disorder, delicately neat, and yet somehow foreign, tropical, and strange. In one hand she held a packet. ‘Will you try,’ she said, ‘some of my father’s tobacco—from dear Cuba? There, as I suppose you know, all smoke, ladies as well as gentlemen. So you need not fear to annoy me. The fragrance will remind me of home. My home, Señor, was by the sea.’ And as she uttered these few words, Desborough, for the first time in his life, realised the poetry of the great deep. ‘Awake or asleep, I dream of it: dear home, dear Cuba!’ ‘But some day,’ said Desborough, with an inward pang, ‘some day you will return?’ ‘Never!’ she cried; ‘ah, never, in Heaven’s name!’ ‘Are you then resident for life in England?’ he inquired, with a strange lightening of spirit. ‘You ask too much, for you ask more than I know,’ she answered sadly; and then, resuming her gaiety of manner: ‘But you have not tried my Cuban tobacco,’ she said. ‘Señorita,’ said he, shyly abashed by some shadow of coquetry in her manner, ‘whatever comes to me—you—I mean,’ he concluded, deeply flushing, ‘that I have no doubt the tobacco is delightful.’ ‘Ah, Señor,’ she said, with almost mournful gravity, ‘you seemed so simple and good, and already you are trying to pay compliments—and besides,’ she added, brightening, with a quick upward glance, into a smile, ‘you do it so badly! English gentlemen, I used to hear, could be fast friends, respectful, honest friends; could be companions, comforters, if the need arose, or champions, and yet never encroach. Do not seek to please me by copying the graces of my countrymen. Be yourself: the frank, kindly, honest English gentleman that I have heard of since my childhood and still longed to meet.’ Harry, much bewildered, and far from clear as to the manners of the Cuban gentlemen, strenuously disclaimed the thought of plagiarism.