And as often as the men of the Committee (clergymen generally, but manly persons, for the most part, not too remote from the facts of life) came within range of the glow and flame of her womanhood, they would think,
"That splendid girl ought to become the mother of children."
During the first year of her wardenship her chief touch with home (her father being estranged) had been through correspondence with his housekeeper. Miss Green's letters were principally about the Governor, but they contained a good deal about Victor Stowell also. Victor had been called to the Bar, but for some reason which nobody could fathom he seemed to have lost heart and hope and the Deemster had sent him round the world.
Fenella found herself tingling with a kind of secret joy at this news. She was utterly ashamed of the impulse to smile at the thought of Victor's sufferings, yet do what she would she could not conquer it.
Her tours abroad with her father had ceased by this time, but in her second year at the Settlement she took holiday with a girl friend, going through Switzerland and Italy and as far afield as Egypt. During that journey fate played some tantalizing pranks with her.
The first of them was at Cairo, where, going into Cook's, to enter her name for a passage to Italy, her breath was almost smitten out of her body by the sight of Victor's name, in his own bold handwriting, in the book above her own—he had that day sailed for Naples.
The second was at Naples itself (she would have died rather than admit to herself that she was following him), where she saw his name again, with Alick Gell's, in the Visitors' List, and being a young woman of independent character, marched up to his hotel to ask for him—he had gone on to Rome.
The third, and most trying, was in the railway station at Zurich, where stepping out of the train from Florence she collided on the crowded platform with the Attorney-General and his comfortable old wife from the Isle of Man, and was told that young Stowell and young Gell had that moment left by train for Paris.
But back in London she found her correspondence with Miss Green even more intoxicating than before, and every new letter seemed like a hawser drawing her home. Victor Stowell had returned to the island, but he was not showing much sign of settling to work. He seemed to have no aim, no object, no ambition. In fact it was the common opinion that the young man was going steadily to the dogs.
"So if you ever had any thoughts in that direction, dear," said Miss Green, "what a lucky escape you had (though we didn't think so at the time) when you signed on at the Settlement!"