After that there could be no disguise between them. Bessie felt no shame, and it never occurred to her that she had been guilty of treason. But Gell talked about disloyalty and said he would never be at ease until she had made a clean breast of it to Stowell. "Then go and tell him we couldn't help loving each other," she said. When he was gone she was very happy. Mr. Stowell would give her up. Of course he would. What had happened between them was dead and buried. Whatever else he was Victor Stowell was a gentleman. He would say nothing to Alick. Then came a shock. On the following morning she felt unwell. She had often felt unwell since she came to Derby Haven, and the Misses Brown, simple old maids, seeing no cause except the change in the girl's way of life, wanted to send for a doctor. But doctors were associated in Bessie's mind with death. If you saw a doctor going into a farmhouse one day you saw a coffin going in the next. Chemists were not open to the same objection. Often on market days, after she had sold out her basket of butter and eggs, she had called at the chemist's at Ramsey for medicine for her mother. So, saying nothing to her housemates, she slipped round to the chemist's at Castletown and asked for a bottle of mixture. The chemist, an elderly man with a fatherly face, smiled at her, and said: "But what is it for, miss?" Bessie described her symptoms, and then the smiling face was grave. "Are you a married woman, ma'am?" asked the chemist. Bessie caught her breath, stared at the man for a moment with eyes full of fear, and then turned and fled out of the shop. All that day she felt dizzy and deaf. The earth seemed to be slipping from under her. Memories of what she had heard from older women came springing to the surface of her mind, and she asked herself why she had not thought of this before. For a long time she struggled to persuade herself that the chemist was wrong, but conviction forced itself upon her at last. Then she asked herself what she was to do, and remembering what she had learned as a child at home of her mother's miserable life before her marriage, she found only one answer to that question. She must ask Mr. Stowell to marry her. The thought of parting from Alick was heart-breaking. But the most terrible thing was that she found herself hoping that Stowell would refuse to release her. It had been a wretched day, dark and cheerless, with driving mist and drizzling rain. Towards nightfall the old maids lighted a fire for her in the sitting-room, which was full of quaint nicknacks and old glass and china. The tide, which was at the bottom of the ebb, was sobbing against the unseen breakwater, and the gulls on the cobbles of the shore were calling continually.