"Good-night, dear! It's 10 p.m., and such delicious dreams are waiting for me upstairs. Bring your motor-car back, and when the time comes (I shall not keep you long) you may carry me off to wherever you please. "Listen, I am going to say something. There is not much in the heart of a woman that you don't know already, but I am about to let you into a secret. The woman who does not want her husband (if only he loves her) to control her, command her, and do anything and everything he likes with her, isn't really a woman at all--she's only a mistake for a man! "Victor, after that burst of nonsense I cannot conclude without telling you again how much I love you. I love you for yourself, just yourself alone, quite apart from anything you may do or have done, whether good or bad, right or wrong, and I shall go on loving you whatever may happen to you in the future, whether you become Deemster or not, go up or go down. "But when I think of the life that is so surely before you, and that I shall walk through it by your side, perfectly united with you, sharing the same hopes and aims and desires, enjoying the same sunshine and weathering the same storms, I have a vision of happiness that makes me cry for joy. "Come back to me soon, dearest. The spring is here in all her youthful beauty; the daffodils are nodding; the gorse on the hedges is a blaze of gold; the sky is blue; the sea is lying asleep under a divine shimmer of sunshine, and your island--your island that is going to be so proud of you--is waiting to clasp you to her heart. "And so am I, my Victor! "FENELLA." III "MY OWN DEAR FENELLA,--I am so troubled about the young woman who is to be charged with the murder of her child that (time being short) I must write at once on the subject. It looks like a case of the temporary mania which so often prompts women to take life (their own or their children's) in the hope of avoiding shame. "God, when I think of it, that in all ages of the world tens of thousands of women have gone through that fiery furnace and that never one man since the days of Adam has come within sight of it, I want to go down on my knees to the meanest and lowest of them as the martyrs of humanity. "Infanticide is of course a serious crime in any country, and especially serious in the Isle of Man now, when the Governor has made up his mind to show no mercy to persons guilty of fatal violence. But the killing of a new-born child is usually treated as felonious homicide. Therefore, if you carry out your intention of standing by the girl's side, you may safely tell her (in order to save her from possible shock) that even a verdict of guilty will not mean death. "How I wish you could plead for the poor thing! But instruct counsel for the defence and you will really be pleading, and I, for one, if I am present, will hear your quivering voice in every word he says.