"Mr. Stowell is a prisoner. Why marry when you can't live together? Why not wait until he is at liberty?"
"Because he may be dead of despair before the time for that comes," said Fenella, "and the resurrection you speak of may never take place. His heart is breaking. He wants something to live for now. He wants me."
Her eyes had filled and the Bishop had to turn his own away. At length he said, stammering painfully, that he was sorry, very sorry, but having to live at peace with the Governor....
Fenella leapt to her feet.
"Bishop," she said, "the chaplain at Castletown is a poor man with five young children and his living is in the gift of the Governor. But if I can find any other clergyman who is willing to perform the ceremony, will you permit him to do so?"
"Ye—s .... that is to say, if you tell him what you have told me, and he is prepared to take the risk."
Within two minutes more Fenella was back in her landau, driving towards Ballamoar across the Curragh roads, with their warm and rooty odour of the bog.
Janet came running out of the house to meet her, and in a flash they were crying in each other's arms. But, to Fenella's surprise, there was a look of joy in Janet's face, and on stepping into the house she found an explanation. An army of maidservants were in every room, with an arsenal of brushes and mops and pails.
"Why, Janet, what are you doing?"
"Getting ready for my boy coming back, that's what I'm doing."