They were seated in the pretty morning-room opening upon the garden, which was the favourite room of the two girls. The window was open to admit the sunshine of a brilliant noon, but a brisk fire was burning, for the afternoons were beginning to grow cold, when the sunshine was no longer there, with the large breath of the sea. Mrs. Seton had arrived by an early train to visit her friends, and had just come from Algy’s sick bed to carry fire and flame into the convalescence of Stella. Her injured virtue, her high propriety, shocked by such proceedings as had been thus brought under her notice, were indescribable. She had given the girl a careless kiss with an air of protest against that very unmeaning endearment, when she came in, and this was how, without any warning, she had assailed the little heroine. Stella’s courage was not at all equal to the encounter. She had held her own with difficulty before the indifference of the young men. She could not bear up at all under the unlooked-for attack of her friend. “Oh, how cruel you are!--how unkind you are!--how dreadful of you to say such things!” she cried. “As if I was merely sport for them like a--like any sort of girl; a lark!--under my father’s windows----” It was too much for Stella. She began to cry in spite of herself, in spite of her pride, which was not equal to this strain. Katherine had come in unperceived while the conversation was going on. “I cannot have my sister spoken to so,” she said. “It is quite false in the first place, and she is weak and nervous and not able to bear such suggestions. If you have anything to say against Stella’s conduct it will be better to say it to my father, or to me. If anybody was to blame, it was your friends who were to blame. They knew what they were about and Stella did not. They must be ignorant indeed if they looked upon her as they would do upon”--Katherine stopped herself hurriedly--“upon a person of experience--an older woman.” “Upon me, you mean!” cried Mrs. Seton. “I am obliged to you, Miss Tredgold! Oh, yes! I have got some experience and so has she, if flirting through a couple of seasons can give it. Two seasons!--more than that. I am sure I have seen her at the Cowes ball I don’t know how many times! And then to pretend she doesn’t know what men are, and what people will say of such an escapade as that! Why, goodness, everybody knows what people say; they will talk for a nothing at all, for a few visits you may have from a friend, and nothing in it but just to pass the time. And then to think she can be out a whole night with a couple of men in a boat, and nothing said! Do you mean to say that you, who are old enough, I am sure, for anything----” “Katherine is not much older than I am,” cried Stella, drying her tears. “Katherine is twenty-three--Katherine is----”