The night wore on. The moon going westward made the broken walls of the Castle stand up black above the shore, with its empty window-sockets like eyes looking from the lighter sky. Stowell talked of the old ruin and its legendary and historical associations--St. Patrick, the spectre hound (_the Mauthe Doa_), the ecclesiastical prison and the graves in the roofless Cathedral. "But I'll tell you a story that beats all that," he said. "About a woman of course?" said Fenella. "Yes--a fallen woman." "Ah!" "Her name was Kate Kinrade. She gave birth to an illegitimate child, and the Bishop--he was a saint--thinking that her conduct tended to the dishonour of the Christian name, ordered that, for the saving of her soul, she should be dragged after a boat across the bay of Peel on the fair of St. Patrick at the height of the market." "And was she?" "The fishermen refused at first to carry out the censure, and then excused themselves on the ground that St. Patrick's day was too tempestuous. But being threatened with fines, they did it at last--in the depth of winter." Fenella's gaiety had gone. Stowell gazed at her face in the moonlight. It was quivering and her bosom was heaving. "And the Bishop was a saint, you say?" "If ever there was one." "He ordered the woman to be dragged through the sea at the tail of a boat?" "Yes." "And what did he do to _the man_?" Stowell gasped. There was silence for a moment, and then the Governor's voice came from the skylight of the cabin: "Are you people never going to turn in?" "Presently." "I am, anyway." It was late. The lights of the little town had blinked out one by one. Only the red light on the stone pier was burning. Fenella recovered her gaiety after a while, shouted for echoes to the Castle rock, and then took Stowell's arm to go down the companion. On reaching the darkened saloon she stepped on tiptoe and dropped her voice under pretence of not disturbing her father, who would be asleep. At the door of her cabin she ceased laughing and said, "Hush! I'm going to say something." "What?" "I don't know if you're aware of it, but ever since I came home you've been calling me 'Miss Stanley,' and I've been calling you--anything." "Well?" "We used to call each other by our Christian names before. Couldn't we go back to that?" "Would you like to?" There was a pause, and then, in a whisper, "Victor!" "Fenella!" "Good-night!" It had been like a kiss. Stowell went to his cabin in rapture, in pain, with a delicious thrill and a sense of stifling hypocrisy. What a hypocrite he had been! It was not to resist temptation but to dally with it that he had come on this cruise. He was there under false pretences. He had pledged himself to the girl at Derby Haven, and yet....