In the meantime Lady Jane had nearly completed her interview with Katherine in the midst of the large assortment of trumpery set out in readiness for the bazaar. “Oh, yes, I suppose they’ll do well enough,” she said, turning over the many coloured articles into which the Sliplin ladies had worked so many hours of their lives with careless hands. “Mark them cheap; the people here like to have bargains, and I’m sure they’re not worth much. Of course, it was not the bazaar things I was thinking of. Tell me, Katherine, what is all this about Stella? I find the country ringing with it. What has she done to have her name mixed up with Charlie Somers and Algy Scott—two of the fastest men one knows? What has the child been doing? And how did she come to know these men?”
“She has been doing nothing, Lady Jane. It is the most wicked invention. I can tell you exactly how it happened. A little yacht was lying in the harbour, and they went up to papa’s observatory, as he calls it, to look at it through his telescope, and papa himself was there, and he said–”
“But this is going very far back, surely? I asked you what Stella was doing with these men.”
“And I am telling you,” cried Katherine, red with indignation. “Papa said it was his yacht, which he had just bought, and they began to argue and bet about who it was from whom he had bought it, and he would not tell them; and then Stella said–”
“My dear Katherine, this elaborate explanation begins to make me fear–”
“Stella cried: ‘Come down and look at it, while Kate orders tea.’ You know how careless she is, and how she orders me about. They ran down by our private gate. It was to settle their bet, and I had tea laid out for them—it was quite warm then—under the trees. Well,” said Katherine, pausing to take breath, “the first thing I saw was a white sail moving round under the cliff while I sat waiting for them to come back. And then papa came down screaming that it was the Stella, his yacht, and that a gale was blowing up. And then we spent the most dreadful evening, and darkness came on and we lost sight of the sail, and I thought I should have died and that it would kill papa.”
Her breath went from her with this rapid narrative, uttered at full speed to keep Lady Jane from interrupting. What with indignation and what with alarm, the quickening of her heart was such that Katherine could say no more. She stopped short and stood panting, with her hand upon her heart.
“And at what hour,” said Lady Jane icily, “did they come back?”
“Oh, I can’t tell what hour it was. It seemed years and years to me. I got her back in a faint and wet to the skin, half dead with sickness and misery and cold. Oh, my poor, poor little girl! And now here are wicked and cruel people saying it is her fault. Her fault to risk her life and make herself ill and drive us out of our senses, papa and me!”
“Oh, Stella would not care very much for her papa and you, so long as she got her fun. So it was as bad as that, was it—a whole night at sea along with these two men? I could not have imagined any girl would have been such a fool.”
“I will not hear my sister spoken of so. It was the men who were fools, or worse, taking her out when a gale was rising. What did she know about the signs of a gale? She thought of nothing but two minutes in the bay, just to see how the boat sailed. It was these men.”
“What is the use of saying anything about the men? I dare say they enjoyed it thoroughly. It doesn’t do them any harm. Why should they mind? It is the girl who ought to look out, for it is she who suffers. Good Heavens, to think that any girl should be such a reckless little fool!”
“Stella has done nothing to be spoken of in that way.”
“Oh, don’t speak to me!” said Lady Jane. “Haven’t I taken you both up and done all I could to give you your chance, you two? And this is my reward. Stella has done nothing? Why, Stella has just compromised herself in the most dreadful way. You know what sort of a man Charlie Somers is? No, you don’t, of course. How should you, not living in a set where you were likely to hear? That’s the worst, you know, of going out a little in one monde and belonging to another all the time.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Lady Jane,” cried Katherine, on the edge of tears.
“No; there’s no need you should know what I mean. A girl, in another position, that got to know Charlie Somers would have known more or less what he was. You, of course, have the disadvantages of both—acquaintance and then ignorance. Who introduced Charlie Somers to your sister? The blame lies on her first of all.”
“It was—they were all—at the hotel, and Stella thought it would be kind to ask Mrs. Seton to a picnic we were giving–”
“Lottie Seton!” cried Lady Jane, sitting down in the weakness of her consternation. “Why, this is the most extraordinary thing of all!”
“I see nothing extraordinary in the whole business,” said Katherine, in a lofty tone.
“Oh, my dear Katherine, for goodness’ sake don’t let me have any more of your innocent little-girlishness. Of course you see nothing! You have no eyes, no sense, no– Lottie Seton!—she to give over two of her own men to a pretty, silly, reckless little thing like Stella, just the kind for them! Well, that is the last thing I should have expected. Why, Lottie Seton is nothing without her tail. If they abandon her she is lost. She is asked to places because she is always sure to be able to bring a few men. What they can see in her nobody knows, but there it is—that’s her faculty. And she actually gave over two of her very choicest–”
“You must excuse me, Lady Jane,” said Katherine, “if I don’t want to hear any more of Mrs. Seton and her men. They are exceedingly rude, stupid, disagreeable men. You may think it a fine thing for us to be elevated to the sphere in which we can meet men like Sir Charles Somers. I don’t think so. I think he is detestable. I think he believes women to exist only for the purpose of amusing him and making him laugh, like an idiot, as he is!”
Lady Jane sat in her easy-chair and looked sardonically at the passion of the girl, whose face was crimson, whose voice was breaking. She was, with that horrible weakness which a high-spirited girl so resents in herself, so near an outbreak of crying that she could scarcely keep the tears within her eyes. The elder lady looked at her for some time in silence. The sight troubled her a little, and amused her a little also. It occurred to her to say, “You are surely in love with him yourself,” which was her instinct, but for once forbore, out of a sort of awed sense that here was a creature who was outside of her common rules.
“He is not an idiot, however,” she said at last. “I don’t say he is intellectual. He does think, perhaps, that women exist, &c. So do most of them, my dear. You will soon find that out if you have anything to do with men. Still, for a good little girl, I have always thought you were nice, Katherine. It is for your sake more than hers that I feel inclined to do that silly little Stella a good turn. How could she be such a little fool? Has she lived on this cliff half her life and doesn’t know when a gale’s coming on? The more shame to her, then! And I don’t doubt that instead of being ashamed she is quite proud of her adventure. And I hear, to make things worse, that Algy Scott went and caught a bad cold over it. That will make his mother and all her set furious with the girl, and say everything about her. He’s not going to die—that’s a good thing. If he had, she need never have shown her impertinent little nose anywhere again. Lady Scott’s an inveterate woman. It will be bad enough as it is. How are we to get things set right again?”
“It is a pity you should take any trouble,” said Katherine; “things are quite right, thank you. We have quite enough in what you call our own monde.”
“Well, and what do you find to object to in the word? It is a very good word; the French understand that sort of thing better than we do. So you have quite enough to