"That's your place, Mr. Stranger," putting him at the end of the table, with Janet and the doctor on either side.
She herself sat by the Deemster, whose powerful face wore an expression of suffering, although, as often as she spoke to him, he turned to her and smiled.
"She's lovelier than ever, really," whispered Janet, and then (with that clairvoyance in the heart of a woman which enables her to read mysteries without knowing it), "What a pity she ever went away!"
As a sequel to the Melliah the talk during dinner was of the ancient customs and old life of the island. The Deemster, who could have told most, said little, but the Governor spoke of the riots of the Manx people (especially the copper riot when they wanted to burn down Government House), and Janet of the roysterers and haffsters of the Athols who kept racehorses and fought duels—her mother in her girlhood had seen the blue mark of the bullet on the dead forehead of one of them.
Such sweetness, such nobility, the men, the women, and the manners! Fenella joined in the talk with great animation, but Stowell was silent and in pain. Here they were, his family and friends, without a suspicion that some day, perhaps soon, he would bring quite another atmosphere into this house, this room. Visions of the mill, the miller, his wife and his daughter rose before him, and he felt like a traitor.
But it was not until they went into the library (it was library and drawing-room combined) that he knew the full depth of his humiliation. The Deemster, who was by the fire, asked Fenella to sing to them, and she did so, sitting at the piano, with Doctor Clucas (who in his youth had been the best dancer in the island) tripping about her with old-fashioned gallantry to find the music and turn over the leaves.
"This is for the Stranger," she said (cutting deeper than she knew), and then followed a series of old Manx ballads, some of them like the wailing of the wind among the rushes on the Curraghs, and some like the dancing of the water in the harbour before a fresh breeze on a summer day.
Then the doctor brought out from a cupboard a few faded sheets inscribed "Isobel Stowell," and Fenella sang "Allan Water" and "Annie Laurie." And then the Deemster closed his eyes, and it seemed to Victor who sat on a hassock by his side, that his father's blue-veined hands trembled on his knees.
"And this is for myself," said Fenella, dropping into a deeper tone as she sang:
Less than the weed that grows beside thy door....
Even less am I."