After a tragic struggle, and many secret tears, she wrote to her father to say what numbers of the Newnham girls were going to Italy for the holidays and how she would love to see the pictures at Florence. To her consternation the Governor answered immediately, saying, "Excellent idea! It will do you good, and I shall be happy to get away from 'the Kays' for a month or two, so I am writing at once to engage rooms at the Washington." She could have cried aloud after reading this letter, but there was no help for it now. Truly, the heart of a girl is a deep riddle and only He Who made can read it. II In the Attorney-General's office Victor Stowell was going from strength to strength. There was a vast deal of ordinary drudgery in his probationary stage, but he was bearing it with amazing patience. His natural talents were recognised as astonishing and he was being promoted by rapid degrees. After a few months the Attorney wrote to the Deemster: "Unless I am mistaken your boy is going to be a great lawyer--the root of the matter seems to be in him." Not content with the routine work of the office he took up (by help of some scheme of University extension) the higher education which had been cut short by his dismissal from King William's, and in due course obtained degrees. One day, after talking with Victor, the Bishop of the island was heard to say: "If that young fellow had been sent up to Oxford, as he ought to have been, he might have taken a first-class in _Literae Humaniores_ and became the most brilliant man of his year." The Attorney-General's office was a large one, and it contained several other students-at-law. Among them now was Alick Gell, who had prevailed upon his mother to prevail upon his father to permit him to follow Stowell. "God's sake, woman," the Speaker had said, "let him go then, and make one more rascally Manx lawyer." But neither Alick's industrious idleness, nor the distractions of a little holiday town in its season, could tempt Stowell from his studies. His successes seemed lightly won, but Alick, who lodged with him in Athol Street, knew that he was a hard worker. He worked early and late as if inspired by a great hope, a great ideal. His only recreation was to spend his week-ends at home. When he arrived on the Saturday afternoons he usually found his father, who was looking younger every day, humming to himself as he worked in an old coat among the flowers in the conservatory. At night they dined together, and after dinner, if the evenings were cool, the Deemster would call on him to stir the peats and draw up to the fire, and then the old man would talk.