"Miss Harland, pray go back to your cabin—you are not strong enough—"
"What's the matter, Catherine?" asked her father—"I'm only repeating some of the nonsense Santoris told me about that collar of jewels—"
"It's not nonsense!" cried Catherine. "It's all true! I remember it all—we planned the murder together—he and I!"—and she pointed to Dr. Brayle—"I told him how the lovers used to meet in secret,—the poor hunted things!—how he—that great artist he patronised—came to her room from the garden entrance at night, and how they talked for hours behind the rose-trees in the avenue—and she—she!—I hated her because I thought you loved her—YOU!" and again she turned to Dr. Brayle, clutching at his arm—"Yes—I thought you loved her!—but she—she loved HIM!—and—" here she paused, shuddering violently, and seemed to lose herself in chaotic ideas—"And so the yacht has gone, and there is peace!—and perhaps we shall forget again!—we were allowed to forget for a little while, but it has all come back to haunt and terrify us—"
And with these words, which broke off in a kind of inarticulate cry, she sank downward in a swoon, Dr. Brayle managing to save her from falling quite to the ground.
Everything was at once in confusion, and while the servants were busy hurrying to and fro for cold water, smelling salts and other reviving cordials, and Catherine was being laid on the sofa and attended to by Dr. Brayle, I slipped away and went up on deck, feeling myself quite overpowered and bewildered by the suddenness and strangeness of the episodes in which I had become involved. In a minute or two Mr. Harland followed me, looking troubled and perplexed.
"What does all this mean?" he said—"I am quite at a loss to understand Catherine's condition. She is hysterical, of course,—but what has caused it? What mad idea has she got into her head about a murder?"
I looked away from him across the sunlit expanse of sea.
"I really cannot tell you," I said, at last—"I am quite as much in the dark as you are. I think she is overwrought, and that she has perhaps taken some of the things Mr. Santoris said too much to heart. Then"—here I hesitated—"she said the other day that she was tired of this yachting trip—in fact, I think it is simply a case of nerves."
"She must have very odd nerves if they persuade her to believe that she and Brayle committed a murder together ages ago"—said Mr. Harland, irritably;—"I never heard of such nonsense in all my life!"
I was silent.