But the great fact of all was that (except for the first catastrophe) his love of Fenella had been the root cause of all that had happened. If he had not loved Fenella with that deep, unconquerable, unquenchable love which had swept everything else away (all qualms and perhaps all conscience), nothing worse could have occurred. He would have married that poor girl now lying in prison. Yes, whatever the consequences to himself, he would have married her before Gell came back into her life, and further complications ensued. But after Fenella returned to the island no other woman had been possible to him. Surely she would see this also? And, if she did, nothing else would matter to either of them—nothing in this world.
Presently, driving at high speed, he realised that the half-conscious impulse which had carried him on to the road to Government House was sweeping him on to the rocky shelf on the coast along which he had driven with Fenella on the day he took his oath.
How fortunate! What was that she had said, then, as they sang together in the fulness of their joy over the hum of the engine and the boom of the sea?—that love, what she called love, never died and never changed, and if she loved anybody, and anything happened to him, she would fight the world for him, even though he were in the wrong!
Even though he were in the wrong!
She would do it now! He was sure she would! Yes, the first shock of the wretched revelation being over, she would see how he had suffered, and how he had striven to do the right, and then—then everything would be well.
Thus, as he flew over the roads, he built himself up in the hope of Fenella's forgiveness. But as he approached Government House his heart failed him again. Something whispered that the excuses he had been making for himself were no better than a pretence—that Fenella would see him now for the first time as the man he really was, not the man she had imagined him to be.
And then—what would happen then?
II
As soon as the trial was over and Bessie, weeping bitterly, was taken back to the cells, Fenella had left Castle Rushen. She was ashamed. Remembering her wild outburst under the Attorney-General's examination, she was reproaching herself bitterly.
Whatever Victor Stowell had done, what right had she to denounce him? She of all others! In open Court too!