"Did you say I was to leave this place immediately? That means first thing to-morrow, doesn't it? I'll go to mother. She's staying with some Methodist people in Quay Lane. Poor mother, she won't be able to believe it. We'll go home by the first train."
Thinking of home she found a kind of proud revenge in triumphing over her enemies.
"Dan Baldromma will have to hold his tongue now. And those Skillicornes will never be allowed to show their ugly old faces again. And Cain the constable will have to find another beat, too, and those impudent girls who stared at me at Douglas station—they'll never have the face to sit in the singing-seat again."
But the smiling background of her thoughts was love.
"Alick will hear of it, won't he? I wrote to him but he didn't answer. Perhaps his sisters prevented him—they've always been casting me up to him. Poor Alick! He'll forgive me—I know he will. It was for Alick I did it. And just think! Next Sunday, perhaps, when people are walking about, we'll go downs Parliament Street together! And me on Alick's arm, and nobody to say a word against it, now that the King has forgiven me!"
Stowell hardly dared to look at the girl. For a long time he could not speak. But at length he compelled himself to tell her that she was not to go home. It was a condition of her pardon that she should leave the island.
"Leave the island?"
"Yes, there's a steamer in the harbour, and you are to sail by it to-night."
"To-night?"
"Yes, to Ireland, land from there, by another steamer, to New York."