“So the electric man has not quite made away with you,”—­he said, carelessly—­“Miss Harland and I had our doubts as to whether we should ever see you again!”

Mr. Harland’s fuzzy eyebrows drew together in a marked frown of displeasure.

“Indeed!” he ejaculated, drily—­“Well, you need have had no fears on that score.  The ‘electric man,’ as you call Mr. Santoris, is an excellent host and has no sinister designs on his friends.”

“Are you quite sure of that?” and Brayle, with an elaborate show of courtesy, set chairs for his patron and for me near Catherine—­ “Derrick tells me that the electric appliances on board his yacht are to him of a terrifying character and that he would not risk passing so much as one night on such a vessel!”

Mr. Harland laughed.

“I must talk to Derrick,”—­he said—­then, approaching his daughter, he asked her kindly if she was better.  She replied in the affirmative, but with some little pettishness.

“My nerves are all unstrung,”—­she said—­“I think that friend of yours is one of those persons who draw all vitality out of everybody else.  There are such people, you know, father!—­people who, when they are getting old and feeble, go about taking stores of fresh life out of others.”

He looked amused.

“You are full of fancies, Catherine,”—­he said—­“And no logical reasoning will ever argue you out of them.  Santoris is all right.  For one thing, he gave me great relief from pain to-day.”

“Ah!  How was that?”—­and Brayle looked up sharply with sudden interest.

“I don’t know how,”—­replied Harland,—­“A drop or two of harmless-looking fluid worked wonders for me—­and in a few moments I felt almost well.  He tells me my illness is not incurable.”

A curious expression difficult to define flitted over Brayle’s face.

“You had better take care,” he said, curtly—­“Invalids should never try experiments.  I’m surprised that a man in your condition should take any drug from the hand of a stranger.”

“Most dangerous!” interpolated Catherine, feebly—­“How could you, father?”

“Well, Santoris isn’t quite a stranger,”—­said Mr. Harland—­“After all, I knew him at college—­”

“You think you knew him,”—­put in Brayle—­“He may not be the same man.”

“He is the same man,”—­answered Mr. Harland, rather testily—­“There are no two of his kind in the world.”

Brayle lifted his eyebrows with a mildly affected air of surprise.

“I thought you had your doubts—­”

“Of course!—­I had and have my doubts concerning everybody and everything”—­said Mr. Harland, “And I suppose I shall have them to the end of my days.  I have sometimes doubted even your good intentions towards me.”

A dark flush overspread Brayle’s face suddenly, and as suddenly paled.  He laughed a little forcedly.

“I hardly think you have any reason to do so,” he said.