"What do you see in the water?" asked the professor, quietly. The answer came in a very low voice, but I heard it as I stood by the helm:—
"I see a man's face under the water, looking up at me."
"And whose face is it?" inquired Cutter, in the same matter-of-fact tone.
"I will not tell you, nor any one," she answered. Cutter looked up at me to see whether I had heard, and I nodded to him. In a few minutes we were alongside of the pier. I refused Chrysophrasia's not very pressing invitation to tea, and, bidding good-by to the rest, I put my arm through the professor's. He seemed ready enough to go with me, so we walked along the smooth quay in the sunset, arm in arm.
"I wanted to speak to you," I said. "You ought to know what happened up there this afternoon. Madame Patoff tried to push Paul over the edge. It was a deliberate attempt to murder him." Cutter stopped in his walk and looked earnestly into my face.
"Did you see it yourself? Did you positively see it, or is that only your impression?"
"I saw it," I answered, shortly.
"She is quite mad still, then. No one but a mad woman would attempt such a thing. What is worse, it is a fixed idea that she has." He told me what Hermione had confided to him.
"Then Paul's life is not safe for a moment," I said, after a moment's pause.
"Unless his brother marries Miss Carvel, I would advise him to be on his guard when he is alone with his mother. He is safe enough when other people are present. I know those cases. They are sly, cautious, timid. She will try and push him over the edge of a precipice when nobody is looking. Before you she will call him 'dear Paul,' and all the rest of it."