still the controlling magnate of many large financial interests in the States.  He was, however, much more English than American, for he had been educated at Oxford, and as a young man had been always associated with English society and English ways.  He had married an English wife, who died when their first child, his daughter, was born, and he was wont to set down all Miss Catherine’s mopish languors to a delicacy inherited from her mother, and to lack of a mother’s care in childhood.  In my opinion Catherine was robust enough, but it was evident that from a very early age she had been given her own way to the fullest extent, and had been so accustomed to have every little ailment exaggerated and made the most of that she had grown to believe health of body and mind as well-nigh impossible to the human being.  Dr. Brayle, I soon perceived, lent himself to this attitude, and I did not like the covert gleam of his mahogany-coloured eyes as he glanced rapidly from father to daughter in the pauses of conversation, watching them as narrowly as a cat might watch a couple of unwary mice.  The secretary, Mr. Swinton, was a pale, precise-looking young man with a somewhat servile demeanour, under which he concealed an inordinately good opinion of himself.  His ideas were centred in and bounded by the art of stenography,—­he was an adept in shorthand and typewriting, could jot down, I forget how many crowds of jostling words a minute, and never made a mistake.  He was a clock-work model of punctuality and dispatch, of respectfulness and obedience,—­but he was no more than a machine,—­ he could not be moved to a spontaneous utterance or a spontaneous smile, unless both smile and utterance were the result of some pleasantness affecting himself.  Neither Dr. Brayle nor Mr. Swinton were men whom one could positively like or dislike,—­they simply had the power of creating an atmosphere in which my spirit found itself swimming like a gold-fish in a bowl, wondering how it got in and how it could get out.

As I sat rather silently at table I felt, rather than saw, Dr. Brayle regarding me with a kind of perplexed curiosity.  I was as fully aware of his sensations as of my own,—­I knew that my presence irritated him, though he was not clever enough to explain even to himself the cause of his irritation.  So far as Mr. Swinton was concerned, he was comfortably wrapped up in a pachydermatous hide of self-appreciation, so that he thought nothing about me one way or the other except as a guest of his patrons, and one therefore to whom he was bound to be civil.  But with Dr. Brayle it was otherwise.  I was a puzzle to him, and—­after a brief study of me—­an annoyance.  He forced himself into conversation with me, however, and we interchanged a few remarks on the weather and on the various beauties of the coast along which we had been sailing all day.

“I see that you care very much for fine scenery,” he said—­“Few women do.”

“Really?” And I smiled.  “Is admiration of the beautiful a special privilege of men only?”