Stowell was breathless.
"But my dear Fenella," he said, "this is a mistake. You are drawing a false inference...."
But Fenella only shook her head.
"Yes. I knew your loyalty to your friend would compel you to say so. But what do you think? I have since found that the fact is common knowledge."
Returning in the train she had occupied a compartment with two men—the strangest looking creatures she had ever seen in a first-class carriage. One of them turned out to be the girl's stepfather and the other a member of the House of Keys.
"Cæsar Qualtrough?"
"Cæsar? Yes, that was the name. They talked about the forthcoming trial and didn't seem to mind my hearing them—perhaps wished me to. The step-father (he spoke as if the whole case had been got up to disgrace him) was complaining that he had not been called by either side. But no matter, he would force himself upon the Court and expose the real criminal—the Speaker's son. It was all a trick. But it should not succeed. He would put the saddle on the right horse, he would. And then they talked about you."
"What .... what about me?"
"That the report of your being too ill to sit was a lie. You were not ill at all and never had been—the step-father knew better. You were merely shirking your duty to save your friend in some way. But that trick shouldn't succeed either, or the people should know what Judges in the Isle of Man were. So you see you must sit on this case, dear—if you are fit for it. You can't afford to have it said that you have sacrificed your duty as a Judge to your personal interests. At your first Court, too."
Stowell was in torture. In spite of the Governor's warning, an almost overpowering impulse came to him to confess, to make a clean breast of everything, there and then, and once for all.