"Helloa, Molly, here we are at the top!"
Looking hack he saw the flat plain below, dotted over with farms, each with its little farmhouse surrounded by its clump of sheltering trees. God, how good to think that every one of them was a home of love! Love! That was the great uniter, the great comforter, the great liberator, the great redeemer!
And to think that all this had been going on since the beginning of the world! That generation after generation some boy had come up this lovely glen to court his girl! Lord, what a glorious place the world was, after all!
His eyes were beaming like the sunshine, and to make his joy complete he galloped over the mountain-tops until he came to a point at which he could look down on Douglas and catch a glimpse of Fenella's home in the midst of its trees.
"Peace in her chamber, wheresoe'er it be,
A holy place...."
Then back to Ballamoar at a brisk canter, with the air musical with the calls of cattle, the bleating of sheep and the songs of birds. And then breakfast for a hungry man—cowrie and eggs and fresh butter and honey and junket, which the Manx called pinjean.
At three o'clock in the afternoon he was on his way to Government House, and by that time the intoxication of his high spirits had suffered a check.
What had Fenella thought of his flight from the yacht? Had she believed his excuse for it? What interpretation had she put upon his intention of calling at Government Offices the following day? And the Governor—had he seen through the thin disguise of that story?
But the cruellest question of all, and the hardest to answer, was whether after all, even now that he was free, he had any right to ask Fenella to become his wife? He, a sin-soiled man, and she a stainless woman!
He felt as if he ought to purge his soul by telling Fenella everything. Yet how could he do that without inflicting an incurable wound on her faith in him? And then what had the Governor said? "Never under any circumstances."