Xenie's heart beat so fast at the sight of what Ninon was carrying that
she could not move another step.
She had to stand still with her hands clasped over her throbbing side
and wait till the girl came up to her. Then:
"Oh, Heaven, Ninon, where did you get that?" she gasped, looking at the
shawl with eyes full of horror, yet afraid to touch it, for it seemed
like some dead thing.
"Oh, ma'amselle," faltered the girl stopping short and looking at
Xenie's anguished face. "Oh, ma'amselle," she faltered again, and her
pretty, piquant face grew white and her black eyes sought the ground,
for Ninon, although poor and lowly, had a very tender heart, and she
could not bear to see the anguish in the eyes of her young mistress.
"I asked you where did you get that shawl?" Xenie repeated. "It was my
sister's shawl. She wore it last night, and now, to-day, she is missing.
Did you know that, Ninon?"
"Yes," the girl answered, in her pretty, broken English. She had heard
it. A gentleman, a tourist, had brought the news to the village, and the
men were all out looking for her.
Would her mistress come to the house? She had something to tell her, but
not out there in the cold and wet. She looked fit to drop, indeed she
did, declared the voluble, young French girl.
So she half-led, half-dragged Mrs. St. John back to the cottage and into
the room where the stricken mother was waiting for tidings of her lost
one.
The maid had a sorrowful story to tell.
The waves had cast a dead body up on the beach an hour ago--the corpse
of a woman, thinly dressed in white, with long, beautiful black hair
flowing loosely and tangled with seaweed.
They could not tell who she was, for--and here Ninon shuddered
visibly--the rough waves had battered and swollen her features utterly
beyond recognition.
But they thought that she was young, for her limbs were white and round,
and beautifully moulded, and this shawl which Ninon carried had been
tightly fastened about her shoulders.
The maid had recognized it and brought it with her to show the bereaved
mother and sister, and to ask if they wished to go and view the body and
try to identify it.
All this the maid told sorrowfully and hesitatingly, while the two women
sat like statues and listened to her, every vestige of hope dying out of
their hearts at the pitiful story, and at length Xenie cast herself down
upon the wet shawl and wept and wailed over it as though it had been
the dead body of poor Lora herself lying there all wet and dripping with
the ocean spray before her anguished sight.
Then Ninon begged her to listen to what she had to say further.
"The gentleman is going to send a vehicle for you that you may go and
see the body, if you wish--I can hear the roll of the wheels now! Shall
I help you to get ready?"
Xenie looked at her mother with a dumb inquiry on her beautiful, pallid
features.
"Yes, go, dear, if you can bear it. Perhaps, after all, it may not be
our darling," said Mrs. Carroll, with a heavy sigh, even while she tried
to cheat her heart by the doubt which she felt to be a vain one.
So, with Ninon's aid, Xenie changed her wet and drabbled garments for a
plain, black silk dress, and a black hat and thick veil.
Then, leaving the maid to take care of her mother, Mrs. St. John entered
the vehicle and was driven to the place where a group of excited
villagers kept watch over a ghastly something upon the sand--the
mutilated semblance of a human being that the cruel sea had beaten and
buffeted beyond recognition.
It was a terrible ordeal for that young, beautiful, and loving sister to
pass alone.
As she stepped from the vehicle with a wildly-beating heart before the
curious scrutiny of the strangers around her, she involuntarily cast a
glance around her in the vague, scarce-defined belief that Howard
Templeton would be upon the scene. But, no, there was no sign of his
presence.
Strangers advanced to lead her forward; strangers questioned her;
strangers drew back the sheet that had been reverently folded over the
dead, and showed her that ghastly form that all believed must have been
her sister.
She knelt down, trying to keep back her sobs, and looked at the form
lying there in the awful majesty of death, with the cold, drizzling rain
beating down on its swollen, discolored features.
How could that awful thing be Lora--her own, beautiful, tender Lora?
And yet, and yet, that beautiful, long, black hair--that fine,
embroidered night-robe, hanging in tattered remnants now where the sea
had rent it--did they not belong to her sister? Sickening with an awful
dread, she touched one of the cold, white hands.
It was a ghastly object now, swollen and livid, yet you could see that
once it had been a beautiful hand, delicate, dimpled, tapering.
And on the slender, third finger, deeply imbedded in the swollen flesh,
were two rings--plain, broad, gold bands. Xenie's eyes fell upon them,
and with a wild, despairing cry, "Oh, Lora, my sister!" she fell upon
the wet sand, in a deep and death-like swoon.