II

THE FAIRY SHIP


I was introduced that evening at dinner to Mr. Harland's physician,
and also to his private secretary. I was not greatly prepossessed in
favour of either of these gentlemen. Dr. Brayle was a dark, slim,
clean-shaven man of middle age with expressionless brown eyes and
sleek black hair which was carefully brushed and parted down the
middle,--he was quiet and self-contained in manner, and yet I
thought I could see that he was fully alive to the advantages of his
position as travelling medical adviser to an American millionaire. I
have not mentioned till now that Morton Harland was an American. I
was always rather in the habit of forgetting the fact, as he had
long ago forsworn his nationality and had naturalised himself as a
British subject. But he had made his vast fortune in America, and
was 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