SECOND BOOK
THE RECKONING
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE RETURN OF FENELLA
"Fate has played me a scurvy trick," thought Stowell. "No matter! I'll go on."
Within an hour he settled Bessie Collister temporarily with Mrs. Quayle. He told her they were to be married ultimately, but meantime (that she might feel more comfortable in her new condition) he intended to find some suitable place in which she would complete her education.
He tried to say this tenderly so as not to hurt the girl's pride, and even affectionately, so as to convey the idea that it was she who would be doing the favour. But a certain shallowness in Bessie's nature disappointed him. While he unfolded his plans she said "Yes" and "yes," looking alternately surprised and startled, but it was with a troubled face, rather than a glad one, that she went off with Mrs. Quayle, whose own face was grave also.
Two days later Stowell went up to see Gell. He had determined to say nothing about his intimate relations with Bessie. Why should he? If it was his duty to marry the girl, it was equally his duty to protect her honour—the honour of the woman who was to become his wife.
Gell was astounded. He listened, with a twinkling eye, to Stowell's story of how he had come upon Bessie in the street, after midnight, friendless and homeless, being shut out by her abominable father, and how he had taken her to Mrs. Quayle's. But when Stowell went on to say that, feeling a certain responsibility for the girl's misfortune, having been a principal cause of it (by keeping her out too late at night) and having seen something of her since, he had come to like and even to love her, and had made up his mind to marry her, Gell broke into exclamations of astonishment which cut Stowell to the quick.
"But Bessie? Bessie Collister? Do you really mean it?"
"Why not?"