THE WOMAN'S SECRET When Stowell awoke next morning at Ballamoar a flock of sheep, liberated from a barn, were bleating before a barking dog. He had passed a restless night. All his soul revolted against the renunciation he had imposed upon himself. It was like life-long imprisonment. Yet what was he to do? He must decide and decide quickly. Suddenly he thought of the Governor. The strong sense and practical wisdom of the Governor might help him to a decision. But Fenella's father! How could he tell his story to Fenella's father? At last an idea came to him whereby he could obtain the Governor's counsel without betraying his secret. He was at the crisis. On what he did now the future of his life depended. And not his own life, only, but Fenella's also, perhaps, and .... Bessie Collister's. At three o'clock he was at the Government offices in Douglas. Police inspectors were at the door and moving about in the corridors. One of them took him up to the Governor's room--a large chamber overlooking the street and noisy from the tram-cars that ran under the windows. The Governor's iron-grey head was bent over a desk-table. "Sit down--I shall not be long." Stowell felt his heart sink in advance. Never would he be able to say what he had come to say. "Well, you gave us the slip nicely, didn't you?" said the Governor, raising his head from his papers. "I'm sorry, Sir," said Stowell (he felt his lip trembling). "It was an important matter, and I've come to town to-day to ask your advice on it." "Something you've been consulted about?" "Well .... yes." "I'm no authority on law, you know." "It's not so much a matter of law, Sir, as of morality--what an honourable man ought to do under difficult circumstances." The Governor looked up sharply. Stowell struggled on. "A client .... I should say a friend .... engaged himself to a young woman awhile ago, and now, owing to circumstances which have arisen since, he finds it difficult to decide whether it is his duty to marry her." "Manxman?" "Yes." "What class?" Stowell felt his voice as well as his lips trembling. "Oh, good enough class, I think." The Governor picked up his pipe from the table, charged it, lighted it, turned his chair towards the fireplace, threw his leg over the rail-fender and said: "Fire away." Then trembling and ashamed, but making a strong call on his resolution, Stowell told his own story--as if it had been that of another man. When he had come to an end there was a long silence. The Governor pulled hard at his pipe and there was no other sound in the room except the rattle of the tram-cars in the street. Stowell felt hot, his lips felt dry, and pushing back his black hair, he found sweat on his forehead. "It was a shocking blunder, of course," he said. "My man doesn't defend himself. Still he thinks the circumstances...." "You mean it wasn't deliberate?" "Good Lord, no!" "In fact a kind of accident?" "One might say so." "Any harm done?"