How fortunate! What was that she had said, then, as they sang together in the fulness of their joy over the hum of the engine and the boom of the sea?--that love, what she called love, never died and never changed, and if she loved anybody, and anything happened to him, she would fight the world for him, even though he were in the wrong! Even though he were in the wrong! She would do it now! He was sure she would! Yes, the first shock of the wretched revelation being over, she would see how he had suffered, and how he had striven to do the right, and then--then everything would be well. Thus, as he flew over the roads, he built himself up in the hope of Fenella's forgiveness. But as he approached Government House his heart failed him again. Something whispered that the excuses he had been making for himself were no better than a pretence--that Fenella would see him now for the first time as the man he really was, not the man she had imagined him to be. And then--what would happen then? II As soon as the trial was over and Bessie, weeping bitterly, was taken back to the cells, Fenella had left Castle Rushen. She was ashamed. Remembering her wild outburst under the Attorney-General's examination, she was reproaching herself bitterly. Whatever Victor Stowell had done, what right had she to denounce him? She of all others! In open Court too! And then Gell! Although nobody else had understood her, he had done so. He might have been living in a fool's paradise, but was it for her her to reveal the awful truth to him? In public, too, and at that harrowing moment? To escape from the pain of self-reproach she kept on telling herself, as she went back in the train, that Stowell had deceived her. Oh, if he had only confessed, at any rate to her, she thought she could have forgiven him in spite of all. But no, he had hidden everything down to the last moment, and left her to find him out. On reaching home she excused herself to old Miss Green and hurried up to her bedroom. Her head ached and her heart was sore--the young woman she had been working for had been found guilty and condemned. She told her maid she was tired, and if anybody asked for her she was not to be disturbed. Two hours passed. Her heart was going through a wild riot of mingled anger and love. It was like madness. She loved Stowell; she hated him; she worshipped him; she despised him. At one moment she recalled with a bitter laugh the mockery of his questioning of Bessie Collister in the dock; at the next she remembered with scorching tears the pathos of his sentencing her. Obscure motives were operating in her soul to intensify her pain. Jealous? She, jealous of that illiterate country girl who had murdered her illegitimate child--what nonsense! No, her idol was broken. She had set it so high and now it was in the dust.