But they do not escape without defilement. On the surface of the tide, when it ebbs from the mudbanks, there gathers an iridescent slime. Tiny particles of floating sand catch and reflect the light. Fragments of dead weed, black or brown, are borne along. The tide has stolen across the beaches below the cottages and carried away the garbage cast there. It has passed where a little while before the cattle strayed, and passing has been stained. Here is no breaking of clear green waves against black defiant rocks, no tumultuous pitched battle between the ocean, inspired by the supreme passion of the tide, and the sullen resistance of unyielding cliffs. Instead a dubious sea wanders in and out amid scenes which the experience of many centuries has not made familiar to it. It was into this shining bay that the Tortoise sped, her white sails bellied with the pleasant wind. Priscilla exulted, with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes. Frank, yielding a little to the fascination of the sailing, was yet ill at ease. His conscience troubled him, the acutely sensitive conscience of a prefect who had been responsible for the tone of Edmondstone House. He feared that he had done wrong in going with Priscilla in the Tortoise, wrong of a particularly flagrant kind. He thought of himself as a man of responsibility placed in the position of trust. Had he been guilty of a breach of trust? It seemed remotely unlikely, so cheerful and sparkling was the sea, that any accident could possibly occur. But with what feelings could he face a broken and reproachful father should anything happen and Priscilla be drowned? The blame would justly rest on him. The fault would be entirely his. “Priscilla,” he said, “I wish we hadn’t come. I ought not to have come when Uncle Lucius has forbidden you to use this boat.” “Oh,” said Priscilla, “don’t you fret. Father doesn’t really mind a bit. He only pretends to, has to, you know, on account of Aunt Juliet He knows jolly well that I can sail the Tortoise, any one could.” Frank could not; but Priscilla’s tone comforted him a little. Yet his conscience was ill at ease. “But Miss Lentaigne,” he said, “your Aunt Juliet----” “She’ll object, all right, of course,” said Priscilla. “If she knew where we are this minute she’d be dead, cock sure that we’d be drowned. She’d probably spend the afternoon planning out nice warm ways of wrapping up our clammy corpses when she got them back. But she doesn’t know, so that’s all right.” “She will know, this evening. We shall have to tell her.” On one point Frank was entirely decided. Priscilla should neither lure nor drive him into any kind of deceit about the expedition. But Priscilla had no such intention. “We’ll tell her right enough,” she said, “when we get home. She’ll be pretty mad, of course, inwardly; but she can’t say much on account of her principles.” “I don’t see what her principles have to do with it.”