to have her. The rector had returned thanks publicly in church, and every common person about the streets curtsied or touched his hat with a deeper sentiment. To think that perhaps she might have been drowned—she, so young, so fair, so largely endowed with everything that heart could desire! If her neighbours were moved by this sentiment, Stella herself was still more deeply moved by it. She felt to the depths of her heart what a thing it was for all these people that she should have been saved from the sea.
Public opinion was still more moved when it was known where Stella was going when she first set foot outside the gates—to inquire after the rash young man who, popular opinion now believed, had beguiled her into danger. How good, how sweet, how forgiving of her! Unless, indeed, there was something—something between them, as people say. This added a new interest to the situation. The world of Sliplin had very much blamed the young men. It had thought them inexcusable from every point of view. To have taken an inexperienced girl out, who knew nothing about yachting, just when that gale was rising! It was intolerable and not to be forgiven. This judgment was modified by the illness of Captain Scott, who, everybody now found, was delicate, and ought not to have exposed himself to the perils of such an expedition. It must have been the other who was to blame, but then the other conciliated everybody by his devotion to his friend. And the community was in a very soft and amiable mood altogether when Stella was seen to issue forth from her father’s gates leaning on Katherine at one side and her stick on the other, to ask for news of her fellow-sufferer. This mood rose to enthusiasm at the sight of her paleness and at the suggestion that there probably was something between Stella and Captain Scott. It was supposed at first that he was an honourable, and a great many peerages fluttered forth. It was a disappointment to find that he was not so; but at least his father was a baronet, and himself an officer in a crack regiment, and he had been in danger of his life. All these circumstances were of an interesting kind.
Stella, however, did not carry out this tender purpose at once. When she actually visited the hotel and made her way upstairs into Captain Scott’s room her own convalescence was complete, and the other invalid was getting well, and there was not only Katherine in attendance upon her, but Sir Charles, who was now commonly seen with her in her walks, and about whom Sliplin began to be divided in its mind whether it was he and not the sick man between whom and Stella there was something. He was certainly very devoted, people said, but then most men were devoted to Stella. Captain Scott had been prepared for the visit, and was eager for it, notwithstanding the disapproval of the nurse, who stood apart by the window and looked daggers at the young ladies, or at least at Stella, who took the chief place by the patient’s bedside and began to chatter to him, trying her best to get into the right tone, the tone of Mrs. Seton, and make the young man laugh. Katherine, who was not “in it,” drew aside to conciliate the attendant a little.
“I don’t hold with visits when a young man is so weak,” said the nurse. “Do you know, miss, that his life just hung on a thread, so to speak? We were on the point of telegraphing for his people, me and the doctor; and he is very weak still.”
“My sister will only stay a few minutes,” said Katherine. “You know she was with them in the boat and escaped with her life too.”
“Oh, I can see, miss, as there was no danger of her life,” said the nurse, indignant. “Look at her colour! I am not thinking anything of the boat. A nasty night at sea is a nasty thing, but nothing for them that can stand it. But he couldn’t stand it; that’s all the difference. The young lady may thank her stars as she hasn’t his death at her door.”
“It was her life that those rash young men risked by their folly,” said Katherine, indignant in her turn.
“Oh, no,” cried the nurse. “I know better than that. When he was off his head he was always going over it. ‘Don’t, Charlie, don’t give in; there’s wind in the sky. Don’t give in to her. What does she know?’ That was what he was always a-saying. And there she sits as bold as brass, that is the cause.”
“You take a great liberty to say so,” said Katherine, returning to her sister’s side.
Stella was now in full career.
“Oh, do you remember the first puff—how it made us all start? How we laughed at him for looking always at the sky! Don’t you remember, Captain Scott, I kept asking you what you were looking for in the sky, and you kept shaking your head?”
Here Stella began shaking her head from side to side and laughing loudly—a laugh echoed by the two young men, but faintly by the invalid, who shook his head too.
“Yes, I saw the wind was coming,” he said. “We ought not to have given in to you, Miss Stella. It doesn’t matter now it’s all over, but it wasn’t nice while it lasted, was it?”
“Speak for yourself, Algy,” said Sir Charles. “You were never made for a sailor. Miss Stella is game for another voyage to-morrow.”
“Oh, if you like,” cried Stella, “with a good man. I shall bargain for a good man—that can manage sails and all that. What is the fun of going out when the men with you won’t sit by you and enjoy it. And all that silly tacking and nonsense—there should have been someone to do it, and you two should have sat by me.”
They both laughed at this and looked at each other. “The fun is in the sailing—for us, don’t you know,” said Sir Charles. It was not necessary in their society even to pretend to another motive. Curiously enough, though Stella desired to ape that freedom, she was not—perhaps no woman is—delivered from the desire to believe that the motive was herself, to give her pleasure. She did not even now understand why her fellow-sufferers should not acknowledge this as the cause of their daring trip.
“Papa wants to thank you,” she said, “for saving my life; but that’s absurd, ain’t it, for you were saving your own. If you had let me drown, you would have drowned too.”
“I don’t know. You were a bit in our way,” said Sir Charles. “We’d have got on better without you, we should, by George! You were an awful responsibility, Miss Stella. I shouldn’t have liked to have faced Lady Scott if Algy had kicked the bucket; and how I should have faced your father if you–”
“If that was all you thought of, I shall never, never go out with you again,” cried Stella with an angry flush. But she could not make up her mind to throw over her two companions for so little. “It was jolly at first, wasn’t it?” she said, after a pause, “until Al—Captain Scott began to look up to the sky, and open his mouth for something to fall in.”
But they did not laugh at this, though Mrs. Seton’s similar witticism had brought on fits of laughter. Captain Scott swore “By George!” softly under his breath; Sir Charles whistled—a very little, but he did whistle, at which sound Stella rose angry from her seat.
“You don’t seem to care much for my visit,” she cried, “though it tired me very much to come. Oh, I know now what is meant by fair-weather friends. We were to be such chums. You were to do anything for me; and now, because it came on to blow—which was not my fault–”
Here Stella’s voice shook, and she was very near bursting into tears.
“Don’t say that, Miss Stella; it’s awfully jolly to see you, and it’s dreadful dull lying here.”
“And weren’t all the old cats shocked!” cried Sir Charles. “Oh, fie!” putting up his hands to his eyes, “to find you had been out half the night along with Algy and me.”
“I have not seen any old cats yet,” said Stella, recovering her temper, “only the young kittens, and they thought it a most terrible adventure—like something in a book. You don’t seem to think anything of that, you boys; you are all full of Captain Scott’s
