“Oh, don’t imagine I don’t know how atrociously I have behaved to her,” he said; “but she drove me mad. She despised me; I saw that. Well, I gave her something to despise me for.”
“Oh, dear Thurso, don’t talk like that,” she said. “If you don’t want to see Catherine, of course you shall not. But your saying that reminds me of a plan you and I might think of when you get better.”
“What’s that?”
“I’ve already spoken to Sir James about it, and he approves. You will have to go somewhere to pick up again, so how about you and me going on a voyage together? We both like the sea, so why not go to America on one of those big liners that are so comfortable? We could stay at that house of Catherine’s on Long Island for a week or two, if you liked.”
“Without Catherine, you mean?” he asked.
“She loathes the sea, you remember. You couldn’t expect her to come.”
His eye brightened.
“Yes; I should like that,” he said. “You and I have had jolly times together by ourselves. But I won’t go if she goes.”
His voice had risen sharply over this, and he was silent afterwards, breathing rather quickly. Then he looked at Maud as she sat beside the bed, and something in her youth and beauty stirred some chord of vibrating memory in him, and his mind, which, for all the deadly weakness of his body, was quite clear, went back to early days when he and she had been together so much, bound in an intimacy and affection that seldom exists between brother and sister. She had always been such a good friend to him, such a capital quick-sympathising comrade, and now, he felt, there must for ever stand between them the horror of these last months. For the moment he got outside himself and judged himself, and saw how hideous he had been.
“I’ve made a pretty good mess of it all,” he said.