s. This meant that Lucien less than ever
could afford to buy; and there are no money-lenders on Ile Lezan.
The letter came as he was on the point of departing for another six
weeks on Ile Ouessant: and that evening the lovers' feet took them to
the nest they had so often dreamed of furnishing. There is no
prettier cottage on the island--I will show it to you on our way
back. Very disconsolately they looked at it, but there was no cure.
Lucien left early next morning.

"That was last autumn, a little before the wreck of your great
English steamship the _Rougemont Castle_. Days after, the tides
carried some of the bodies even here, to Ile Lezan; but not many--
four or five at the most--and we, cut off from shore around this
corner of the coast, were long in hearing the terrible news.
Even the lighthouse-keepers on Ile Ouessant knew nothing of it until
morning, for she struck in the night, you remember, attempting to run
through the Inner Passage and save her time.

"I believe--but on this point will not be certain--that the alarm
first came to Lucien, and in the way I shall tell you. At any rate
he was walking alone in the early morning, and somewhere along the
shore to the south of the lighthouse, when he came on a body lying on
the seaweed in a gully of the rocks.

"It was the body of a woman, clad only in a nightdress. As he
stooped over her, Lucien saw that she was exceeding beautiful; yet
not a girl, but a well-developed woman of thirty or thereabouts, with
heavy coils of dark hair, well-rounded shoulders, and (as he
described it to me later on) a magnificent throat.

"He had reason enough to remark her throat, for as he turned the body
over--it lay on its right side--to place a hand over the heart, if
perchance some life lingered, the nightdress, open at the throat,
disclosed one, two, three superb necklaces of diamonds. There were
rings of diamonds on her fingers, too, and afterwards many fine gems
were found sewn within a short vest or camisole of silk she wore
under her nightdress. But Lucien's eyes were fastened on the three
necklaces.

"Doubtless the poor lady, aroused in her berth as the ship struck,
had clasped these hurriedly about her throat before rushing on deck.
So, might her life be spared, she would save with it many thousands
of pounds. They tell me since that in moments of panic women always
think first of their jewels.

"But here she lay drowned, and the jewels--as I said, Lucien co