The side with which she would be in sympathy would be that of the young men. The escapade in the boat would be to her their fun, but on Stella’s it would not be fun. It would be folly of the deepest dye, perhaps--who could tell?--depravity. In fiction--a young woman not much in society instinctively takes a good many of her ideas from fiction--it had become fashionable of late to represent wicked girls, girls without soul or heart, as the prevailing type. Lady Jane might suppose that Stella, whom she did not know very well, was a girl without soul or heart, ready to do anything for a little excitement and a new sensation, without the least reflection what would come of it. Nay, was not that the _rôle_ which Stella herself was proposing to assume? Was it not to a certain extent her real character? This thought made Katherine’s heart ache. And how if Lady Jane should think she had really compromised herself, forfeited, if not her good name, yet the bloom that ought to surround it? Katherine’s courage sank at the thought. And, on the other hand, there was her father, who would understand none of these things, who would turn anybody out of his house who breathed a whisper against Stella, who would show Sir Charles himself the door. CHAPTER VIII. It would be absurd to suppose that Mrs. Shanks and Miss Mildmay had not heard the entire story of Stella’s escape and all that led up to it, the foolish venture and the unexpected and too serious punishment. They had known all about it from the first moment. They had seen her running down to the beach with her attendants after her, and had heard all about the boat with the new figure-head which Mr. Tredgold had got a bargain and had called after his favourite child. And they had said to each other as soon as they had heard of it, “Mark my words! we shall soon hear of an accident to that boat.” They had related this fact in all the drawing-rooms in the neighbourhood with great, but modest, pride when the accident did take place. But they had shown the greatest interest in Stella, and made no disagreeable remarks as to the depravity of her expedition. Nobody had been surprised at this self-denial at first, for no one had supposed that there was any blame attaching to the young party, two out of the three of whom had suffered so much for their imprudence; for Stella’s cold and the shock to her nerves had at first been raised by a complimentary doctor almost to the same flattering seriousness as Captain Scott’s pneumonia. Now the event altogether had begun to sink a little into the mild perspective of distance, as a thing which was over and done with, though it would always be an exciting reminiscence to talk of--the night when poor Stella Tredgold had been carried out to sea by the sudden squall, “just in her white afternoon frock, poor thing, without a wrap or anything.”