“It’s really quite interesting!” she said, with a reluctant smile—­ “I suppose it was the strange yacht that had the music on board last night.  It kept me awake.  I thought it was some tiresome person out in a boat with a gramophone.”

I laughed.

“Oh, Miss Harland!” I exclaimed—­“Surely you could not have thought it a gramophone!  Such music!  It was perfectly exquisite!”

“Was it?” And she drew the ugly grey woollen shawl in which she was wrapped closer about her sallow throat as she sat up in her bed and looked at me—­“Well, it may have been, to you,—­you seem to find delight in everything,—­I’m sure I don’t know why!  Of course it’s very nice to have such a happy disposition—­but really that music teased me dreadfully.  Such a bore having music when you want to go to sleep.”

I was silent, and having a piece of embroidery to occupy my hands I began to work at it.

“I hope you’re quite comfortable on board,”—­she resumed, presently--"Have you all you want in your rooms?”

I assured her that everything was perfect.

She sighed.

“I wish I could say the same!” she said—­“I really hate yachting, but father likes it, so I must sacrifice myself.”  Here she sighed again.  I saw she was really convinced that she was immolating herself on the altar of filial obedience.  “You know he is very ill,”—­she went on—­“and that he cannot live long?”

“He told me something about it,”—­I answered—­“and I said then, as I say now, that the doctors may be wrong.”

“Oh no, they cannot be wrong in his case,” she declared, shaking her head dismally—­“They know the symptoms, and they can only avert the end for a time.  I’m very thankful Dr. Brayle was able to come with us on this trip.”

“I suppose he is paid a good deal for his services?” I said.

“Eight hundred guineas”—­she answered—­“But, you see, he has to leave his patients in London, and find another man to attend to them during his absence.  He is so very clever and so much sought after—­I don’t know what I should do without him, I’m sure!”

“Has he any special treatment for you?” I asked.

“Oh yes,—­he gives me electricity.  He has a wonderful battery—­he has got it fitted up here in the next cabin—­and while I hold two handles he turns it on and it runs all over me.  I feel always better for the moment—­but the effect soon passes.”

I looked at her with a smile.

“I should think so!  Dear Miss Harland, do you really believe in that way of administering electricity?”

“Of course I do!” she answered—­“You see, it’s all a question of what they call bacteriology nowadays.  Medicine is no use unless it can kill the microbes that are eating us up inside and out.  And there’s scarcely any drug that can do that.  Electricity is the only remedy.  It gives the little brutes a shock;”—­and the poor lady laughed weakly—­“and it kills some, but not all.  It’s a dreadful scheme of creation, don’t you think, to make human beings no better than happy hunting grounds for invisible creatures to feed upon?”