“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.”