osal--Clara had opportunities of returning to the subject of the
lost men, and of asking questions in relation to them which would make
it impossible for Crayford to plead an excuse for not answering her. How
was he to meet those questions? How could he still keep her in ignorance
of the truth?

These were the reflections which now troubled Crayford, and which
presented him, after his rescue, in the strangely inappropriate
character of a depressed and anxious man. His brother officers, as
he well knew, looked to him to take the chief responsibility. If he
declined to accept it, he would instantly confirm the horrible suspicion
in Clara's mind. The emergency must be met; but how to meet it--at once
honorably and mercifully--was more than Crayford could tell. He
was still lost in his own gloomy thoughts when his wife entered the
boat-house. Turning to look at her, he saw his own perturbations and
anxieties plainly reflected in Mrs. Crayford's face.

"Have you seen anything of Clara?" he asked. "Is she still on the
beach?"

"She is following me to this place," Mrs. Crayford replied. "I have been
speaking to her this morning. She is just as resolute as ever to insist
on your telling her of the circumstances under which Frank is missing.
As things are, you have no alternative but to answer her."

"Help me to answer her, Lucy. Tell me, before she comes in, how this
dreadful suspicion first took possession of her. All she could possibly
have known when we left England was that the two men were appointed to
separate ships. What could have led her to suspect that they had come
together?"

"She was firmly persuaded, William, that they _would_ come together when
the Expedition left England. And she had read in books of Arctic travel,
of men left behind by their comrades on the march, and of men adrift on
ice-bergs. With her mind full of these images and forebodings, she saw
Frank and Wardour (or dreamed of them) in one of her attacks of trance.
I was by her side; I heard what she said at the time. She warned Frank
that Wardour had discovered the truth. She called out to him, 'While you
can stand, keep with the other men, Frank!'"

"Good God!" cried Crayford; "I warned him myself, almost in those very
words, the last time I saw him!"

"Don't acknowledge it, William! Keep her in ignorance of what you
have just told me. She will not take it for what it is--a startling
coincidence, and nothing more. She will accept it as posit