‘At the first word of the Doctor’s disappearance, to run off, helter-skelter, like a schoolgirl ... yes, Linda Thorne,’ cried Cassandra, peering round at some person or persons across her shoulder, ‘I am talking of you. Come down and hear all the wicked things I have to say. At the first word of the Doctor’s disappearance to run off like a schoolgirl, taking somebody else’s husband with her! It was atrocious! Who is that behind you, Linda? Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot. Tell Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot, from me, that everything worth looking after on board the _Princess_ is found.’ As Cassandra Tighe scored her point, not without a little air of triumph, Linda tripped gaily down into the cabin. ‘We are to have the very finest weather, Miss Tighe, and all the world means to remain on deck. Only, of course, one wants shawls. What! Mrs. Arbuthnot?’ Pausing in her search among the heap of wraps, it would seem that Linda recognised Dinah’s presence with amiable surprise. But Dinah was coldly silent. ‘Surely you, of all people, are not going to become a cabin passenger? My dear creature, I have just escaped the quaintest little adventure in the world! But for Miss Tighe’s advent, I should have eloped, yes, run clean, straight away, with your husband. We were planning it all out, from a commercial standpoint, as we flew, frantically, along the sandhills after Robbie. Were we not, Miss Tighe?’ ‘I leave these matters to your own conscience,’ was the dry answer. Possibly, Cassandra recollected that the butterflies were not flying very frantically at the moment when she captured them on the starlit dunes. ‘If you had run away with Mrs. Arbuthnot’s husband, I should have taken good care to run with you. I warned the Doctor of my intentions before I left the _Princess_.’ ‘It was quite too unselfish, Miss Tighe, and, pecuniarily, most àpropos. I possessed five sous in copper (Guernsey currency); Mr. Arbuthnot was worth something under twenty francs. We should have had to leave our watches at the Mont de Piété, for me, alas! no novel experience, the moment we reached Cherbourg. Things have turned out, under Providence, for the best. Only, I think, I _think_,’ admitted Linda, with arch frankness, ‘the Doctor rather regrets having to retire into insignificance. If I had not come back, Robbie would have remained the hero of the situation.’