She dare not ask whom, but lay wondering if Alick knew where she was and what had happened to her. After a while she said, "Is it in the papers?" The nurse nodded, and after a moment, with her eyes down, Bessie said, "Has anybody been here to ask for me?" "Yes, your mother--she comes night and morning." "Nobody else?" "Nobody." Bessie broke into sobs and turned her face to the wall. Alick knew! He had given her up! She had lost him! When she recovered from an agony of tears her eyes were glittering and her heart was bitter. What did she care what became of her now? They might do what they liked with her. Deny? What was the good? She would deny no longer. She would tell the truth about everything. Then Fenella Stanley came. Bessie thought she liked Miss Stanley better than any woman, except her mother, she had ever known. But that only made it the harder to hold to her resolution, for if she told the truth she would surely hurt Fenella. "Oh, why do you come to torture me?" she cried, when Fenella asked who was her "friend." And not another word would she say. Two days later, before breakfast, Cain, the constable, came with a sergeant of police to take her to Castle Rushen. She did not care! Why should she? But as she was leaving the hospital the nurse with the kind face whispered, "Good-bye, dear. You're all right now. I'm going away and will say nothing." It was a cruelly beautiful morning, with a golden shimmer from the rising sun upon a tranquil sea. The railway station was full of townspeople going up to Douglas (it was market day there), so Bessie was hurried into the last compartment. When the train ran into the country a flood of memories swept over her and she found it hard to keep back her tears. The young lambs were skipping on the hill-sides; the sheep were bleating; girls in sun bonnets were coming from the whitewashed outhouses to drive the cattle into the fields. When they drew up at the station for the glen the shingly platform was crowded with passengers waiting for the train--rosy-faced women with broad open baskets of butter and eggs, and elderly farmers smoking their strong thick twist and surrounded by their panting dogs. Bessie knew them all. At the last moment a young woman in a low cut blouse ran up--it was Susie Stephen. Bessie crept into a corner of the carriage and closed her eyes. But she could not shut out everything. Over the rumble of the wheels, when the train started again, she heard shrieks of laughter from the compartment in front. The elderly men were jesting in their free way with the girls, and the girls, nothing loth, were answering them back.