"But it all happened before I returned to the Island."
"That's why. If you hadn't stayed away so long it wouldn't have happened at all."
Then up from the sweet and sorrowful places of Janet's memory came the story of Stowell's love for Fenella—how he had worked for her and waited for her through all his long years as a student-at-law.
"It's me to know, my dear. He used to come home every week-end, and his poor father thought it was to see him, but I knew better. 'Any fresh news?' he would say, and I knew what news he wanted. When your photo came he held it under the lamp and said, 'Don't you think she's like my mother, Janet—just a little like?' And I told him yes, and that was to say you were like the loveliest woman that ever walked the world—in this island anyway."
Fenella was struggling to control herself.
"Poor boy, how he worked and worked for you! Jacob never worked harder or waited longer for Rachel. And what was his reward? You signed on at your ridiculous Settlement for seven years and sent word you would never marry. I had it from Catharine Green and it was a sorrowful woman I was to break the news to him. He looked at me with his mother's eyes, and it was fit enough to break my heart to see how he cried with his face on the pillow. But it was with his father's eyes he rose and said, 'It shall never happen again, mother.' He called me mother too, God bless him!"
Fenella was smothering her mouth in her handkerchief.
"If he went wrong after that, was it any wonder? Young men are young men, and the Lord won't be too hard on them for being what He has made them. Some people seem to think when trouble comes between a young man and a young woman that the young woman is the only one to be pitied. Well, I'm a woman and I don't. And when a young man has been cut off from the love that would have kept him right and the heavens have gone dark on him...."
"But I loved him all the time, Janet."
"Then why didn't you come back, instead of leaving him to the mercy of these good-looking young vixens who will run any risks with a young man if they can only get him to marry them?"