She, too, seemed embarrassed, and when Miss Green (an English counterpart of Janet) left them alone with each other, and he gave her the ring, saying what his father had told him to do with it, her embarrassment increased.
She held it in her fingers, turned it over and looked at it, and said, "How lovely! How good of him!" And then, trembling and tingling, and with a slightly heightened colour, she looked at Stowell.
Suddenly a thought flashed upon him. Why had his father told him to take the ring to her himself? The answer was speaking in Fenella's eyes—that, at the topmost moment of their love, he should put it on.
At the next instant the Governor entered the drawing-room, and Fenella, holding up her hand (she had put the ring on for herself by this time) cried:
"See what the Deemster has left to me!"
"Beautiful!" said the Governor, and then he looked from Stowell to his daughter.
Stowell rose to go. He had the sense of flying from the house. Fenella must have thought him a fool. The Governor must have thought him a fool. But better be a fool than a traitor!
A week passed and then an idea came to him. He would tell the truth to Bessie's people—the whole truth if necessary. That would commit him once for all to the line of honour. Having taken that public plunge there could be no looking back, and the bitter struggle between his passion and his duty would then be over.
With a certain pride at the thought of being about to do an heroic thing he set out one day for Ramsey, intending to return by Baldromma. But on entering his outer office his young clerk told him that Mr. Daniel Collister was in his private room, that he had been waiting there for two hours, and refusing to go away.
Dan, with his short, gross figure, was standing astride on the hearthrug, and without so much as a bow he plunged into his business.