“I won’t have that, Brayle!” he said, sharply—­“I tell you I won’t have it!  Santoris is no charlatan—­never was!—­he won his honours at Oxford like a man—­his conduct all the time I ever knew him was perfectly open and blameless—­he did no mean tricks, and pandered to nothing base—­and if some of us fellows were frightened of him (as we were) it was because he did everything better than we could do it, and was superior to us all.  That’s the truth!—­and there’s no getting over it.  Nothing gives small minds a better handle for hatred than superiority—­especially when that superiority is never asserted, but only felt.”

“You surprise me,”—­murmured Brayle, half apologetically—­“I thought—­”

“Never mind what you thought!” said Mr. Harland, with a sudden ugly irritation of manner that sometimes disfigured him—­“Your thoughts are not of the least importance!”

Dr. Brayle flushed angrily and Catherine looked surprised and visibly indignant.

“Father!  How can you be so rude!”

“Am I rude?” And Mr. Harland shrugged his shoulders indifferently—­ “Well!  I may be—­but I never take a man’s hospitality and permit myself to listen to abuse of him afterwards.”

“I assure you—­” began Dr. Brayle, almost humbly.

“There, there!  If I spoke hastily, I apologise.  But Santoris is too straightforward a man to be suspected of any dishonesty or chicanery—­and certainly no one on board this vessel shall treat his name with anything but respect.”  Here he turned to me—­“Will you come on deck for a little while before bedtime, or would you rather rest?”

I saw that he wished to speak to me, and willingly agreed to accompany him.  Dinner being well over, we left the saloon, and were soon pacing the deck together under the light of a brilliant moon.  Instinctively we both looked towards the ‘Dream’ yacht,—­there was no illumination about her this evening save the usual lamp hung in the rigging and the tiny gleams of radiance through her port-holes,- -and her graceful masts and spars were like fine black pencillings seen against the bare slope of a mountain made almost silver to the summit by the singularly searching clearness of the moonbeams.  My host paused in his walk beside me to light a cigar.

“I’m sure you are convinced that Santoris is honest,” he said—­“Are you not?”

“In what way should I doubt him?”—­I replied, evasively—­“I scarcely know him!”

Hardly had I said this when a sudden self-reproach stung me.  How dare I say that I scarcely knew one who had been known to me for ages?  I leaned against the deck rail looking up at the violet sky, my heart beating quickly.  My companion was still busy lighting his cigar, but when this was done to his satisfaction he resumed.

“True!  You scarcely know him, but you are quick to form opinions, and your instincts are often, though perhaps not always, correct.  At any rate, you have no distrust of him?  You like him?”