he dead, this world of the living who
hurry on to join them.

If this is the case with the illustrious, the wealthy and the powerful,
how much more must it be so in the instance of an almost unknown girl, a
stranger in the land? Morris and her father remembered her, for she
was part of their lives and lived on with their lives. Stephen Layard
mourned for the woman whom he had wished to marry--fiercely at first,
with the sharp pain of disappointed passion; then intermittently; and at
last, after he was comfortably wedded to somebody else, with a mild and
sentimental regret three or four times a year. Eliza, too, when once
convinced that she was "really dead," was "much shocked," and talked
vaguely of the judgments and dispensations of Providence, as though this
victim were pre-eminently deserving of its most stern decrees. It was
rumoured, however, among the observant that her Christian sorrow was,
perhaps, tempered by a secret relief at the absence of a rival, who, as
she now admitted, sang extremely well and had beautiful eyes.

The Colonel also thought of the guest whom the sea had given and taken
away, and with a real regret, for this girl's force, talents, and
loveliness had touched and impressed him who had sufficient intellect
and experience to know that she was a person cast in a rare and noble
mould. But to Morris he never mentioned her name. No further confidence
had passed between them on the matter. Yet he knew that to his son this
name was holy. Therefore, being in some ways a wise man, he thought it
well to keep his lips shut and to let the dead bury their dead.

By all the rest Stella Fregelius was soon as much forgotten as though
she had never walked the world or breathed its air. That gale had done
much damage and taken away many lives--all down the coast was heard the
voice of mourning; hers chanced to be one of them, and there was nothing
to be said.

On the morning of the eleventh day came a telegram from Mary addressed
to Morris, and dated from London. It was brief and to the point. "Come
to dinner with me at Seaview, and bring your father.--Mary."

When Morris drove to Seaview that evening he was as a man is in a dream.
Sorrow had done its work on him, agonising his nerves, till at length
they seemed to be blunted as with a very excess of pain, much as the
nerves of the victims of the Inquisition were sometimes blunted, till
at length they could scarcely feel the pincers bite or the irons bu