Either she submitted without murmuring or fearlessly defied authority.

In the present case she relinquished hope and purpose obediently, while inwardly longing for exploration, of her "darling little island" all the more.
But authority was not perhaps altogether unjustified of its decision, for the inhabitants of the spot so engaging to Damaris' imagination were a close corporation, a race of sailors and fishermen and, so said rumour, somewhat rough customers at that.

They lived according to their own traditions and unwritten laws, entertained a lordly contempt for wage-earning labourers and landsmen, and, save when money was likely to pass, were grudging of hospitality even to persons of quality setting foot within their coasts.
To their reprehensible tendencies in this last respect the Miss Minetts could bear painful witness, as--with hushed voices and entreaties the sorry tale might "go no further"-- they more than once confided to Theresa Bilson.

For one Saturday afternoon--unknown to the vicar--being zealous in the admonishing of recalcitrant church-goers and rounding up of possible Sunday-school recruits, they crossed to the island at low tide; and in their best district visitor manner--too often a sparkling blend of condescension and familiarity, warranted to irritate--severally demanded entrance to the first two of the black cottages .-- The Inn they avoided.
Refined gentlewomen can hardly be expected, even in the interests of religion, to risk pollution by visiting a common tavern, more particularly when a company of half-grown lads and blue jerseyed men--who may, of course, have been carousing within--hangs about its morally malodorous door.
Of precisely what followed their attempted violation of the privacy of those two cottages, even the Miss Minetts themselves could subsequently give no very coherent account.

They only knew that some half-hour later, with petticoats raised to a height gravely imperilling decency, they splashed landward across the causeway--now ankle-deep in water--while the lads congregated before the Inn laughed boisterously, the men turned away with a guffaw, dogs of disgracefully mixed parentage yelped, and the elder female members of the Proud and Sclanders families flung phrases lamentably subversive of gentility after their retreating figures from the foreshore.
Modesty and mortification alike forbade the outraged ladies reporting the episode to Dr.Horniblow in extenso.