“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.”