entless lashings.

CHAPTER XV.

"SHE IS MY WIFE."

It was later in the season than people were in the habit of remaining at
Mentone; but the unusual attraction of a wedding in high life had
induced many to delay their departure and so a large number had tarried,
much to the gratification and profit of hotel proprietors and other
natives, only to be disappointed by missing the wedding, after all.

Everything possible was done to obtain some clew to the missing girl,
but all to no purpose. Three weeks went by, and every one, save Lord
Cameron, had given up all hope of ever solving the sad mystery. He alone
still patiently kept up his search day by day.

By the beginning of the fourth week, Mr. and Mrs. Mencke both agreed
that the girl must be dead, and announced their intention of leaving in
a few days for Switzerland. Mrs. Mencke was so confirmed in her opinion
that Violet was not living that she assumed mourning for her, and while
she remained in Mentone her deeply bordered handkerchiefs were never out
of her hands, and were frequently brought into ostentatious use.

The day before the one set for their departure was intensely warm and
oppressive, and everybody was almost prostrated by the heat.

Lady Cameron and Mrs. Mencke could only exist by lying, lightly clad, in
hammocks swung upon the north piazza of the hotel, while Mr. Mencke
idled away the hours as best he could, in the smoking and reading-room,
or in imbibing mint juleps.

Lord Cameron, as was his invariable custom, had departed, in spite of
the heat, upon one of his long rides immediately after breakfast. His
quest for the girl whom he had so fondly loved was becoming almost a
mania.

He had grown thin and pale; his appetite failed, until he seemed not to
eat sufficient to keep life in him. He was depressed, and absent-minded,
and so nervous and restless that his mother suffered the keenest anxiety
lest all this strain upon his mind and body should end in insanity!

"Oh, what an interminable day this has seemed!" sighed Lady Cameron to
her companion, as, soft on the saltry stillness of the air, there came
to them the sound of a distant church clock striking the hour of six. "I
hope I may never pass another like it--I could neither read nor work,
while my thoughts and the dread of something--I know not what--have
nearly driven me wild."

Mrs. Mencke shivered, in spite of the heat, at these words. She also had
felt as if she could never li