For a while she raved like a madwoman. Everybody had lied to her and deceived her, and the Deemster had done nothing to save her, because he wanted her out of the way.
But after a while an idea occurred to her and she became calm. Alick Gell! If Alick would go up to London and see the King and tell him that she had never intended to kill her baby he would forgive her. And then Alick would come galloping back, at the last moment perhaps, waving a paper over his head and crying, "Stop!"
She had seen such things in her illustrated Weekly Budget—the story paper she used to read on Sunday mornings at home, while the dinner was cooking in the oven-pot and her mother was singing hymns in the Primitive chapel and her father was poring over the "Mistakes of Moses."
But would he do it? She had deceived him twice. And then his sisters had always been trying to drag him away from her.
All at once, like the echo of a bell through a thick mist over the sea, came the memory of his cry as she was being carried out of Court: "Never mind, Bessie, I would rather be you than your Judge!"
Yes, he loved her still, and (out of the cunning which the air of a prison breeds) a scheme flashed upon her. She would write a letter to Alick Gell, not telling him what she wanted him to do, but plainly pointing to it.
Fenella was amazed to find Bessie apparently reconciled to her end. She had expected torrents of tears and even the coarse language of the farmyard.
"The suspense was the worst. I shall be glad when it's all over," said Bessie.
The only thing that troubled her was to die while Alick was thinking so hard of her, and if her hand did not shake so much she would write to ask for his forgiveness.
"I'll write for you," said Fenella.