to send a dog to sea in, let alone Christian
souls. It was I who was with Clavering on
the island; and after we got to New Zealand we
parted, and I have never heard from him since.
As his good luck would have it, the mail steamer
for home started the very day we landed, and
he would go off in her, without waiting even to
buy new clothes. It seems to me,"wound up
Mr. Smith, with his pleasant smile, "that we
are at cross-purposes somehow."

Whence comes the marvellous strength
which springs up in the human heart in times
of intense emotion? Who has not felt the
numbness which comes over the soul at such
moments, leaving us free to act, but taking
away, for the time, all power of feeling? It
was thus with Elsie Denbigh. While she never
doubted that she was on the brink of some
awful discovery, she was not conscious of any
keen suffering, but acted her part, as one often
does in dreams, taking everything with a stolid
calmness, and looking at herself from the
outside, as it were, all the time, vaguely wondering
at the whole position and at her own composure.

Her soft voice was even more subdued and
quiet than ever as she said:

"Will you sit down? I do not understand
you quite."

She seated herself, bringing her chair close to
the table which divided them, and instinctively
leaning her head on her hand, so as to shade
her face.

"Now will you tell me, please, about yourself
and Mr. Clavering? You were in the
shipwreck, I think you said?"

"Queer!" thought Mr. Smith. "Mr. Denbigh
doesn't gossip much to his wife about his
friends' affairs. I suppose I am in for it now,
and I must set her curiosity at rest before she
will take the trouble to hunt out Clavering's
address for me."

"I should think I was!" he answered aloud.
"Ah! it was a horrible business! I hope you
may never see anything like it, Mrs. Denbigh."

"I heard it was a fearful storm."

"You may say that. Not fit to talk to a lady
about. Then came I can't tell you how many
hours' tossing about in an open boat. Clavering
and I and a few others, in such a sea! It
is of no use making a horrible story of it. The
end was, that in the pitchy darkness we drove
right upon a rock, and our boat was smashed,
and out went we! Yah! it is not nice to think
about, even now. It was a horrible night that
I spent, clinging to the rock, half in the water,
wondering all the time how soon I should be
washed off, and whether I was the only one left
alive. When morning dawned at last, there was
Clavering near me, all the other poor fellows
gone! We were on a long reef of rock, and
we managed by degrees to scramble along it to
the island, which was only a big rock itself. We
had nothing to eat but seals, which are not
dainty food; but somehow we managed to keep
body and soul together for more than two years."

He paused; but there was no word, no movement
on the part of the listening figure opposite.
He went on,

"We were carried off at last by a ship from
New Zealand that came in search of seals;
and then, as I told you, we said good-bye to
each other, and I went up the country, and
Herbert Clavering set off home. I have never
heard from him, or of him, since. Can you give
me news of him?"

"No," she said; "I know nothing of him.
I can tell you nothing."

"Curious! Surely Mr. Denbigh must have
seen him since he came home? I know he
got to England all right; at least I know his
ship did, for I chanced on an old Times long
afterwards, and saw the day of her arrival
mentioned. The 14th of January it was—this
identical day three years, by-the-by."

The 14th of January! This day three years!
The eve of her wedding day! But still Elsie
seemed to feel nothing, and to realise nothing.
One question she must ask. She could not look
beyond it.

"I know nothing about it," she said again;
and the slow measured voice sounded in her
ears strangely unlike her own. "But will you
tell me one thing. I have heard—I mean they
used to say—that Mr. Clavering's wife gave
him a ring on the day they parted. Can you tell
me if he ever wore it?"

"Oh, yes! Clavering had a ring—a very
valuable ring—a ruby, I think. I used to tell
him it was lucky he had some money sewn up in
a girdle round his waist, when we were cast
adrift; for I believe he'd have stayed away from
home for ever, rather than have sold that ring
to pay his passage, poor fellow! Perhaps,"
said Mr. Smith, brightening with a sudden idea,
"you can tell me where to find Mrs. Clavering,
if Clavering himself is not in England."

In one second of time her mind surveyed all
the circumstances of the past. She remembered
the stranger, whose curious travel-stained
appearance had struck old Isott; she saw before
her, her husband's white scared face on the
bridal morning; she thought of his fury when
she discovered the fatal ring; she acted over
in her fancy the scenes of his illness; she
recalled his various eccentricities, the restless
jealous dread; and she never for one instant
doubted the abyss of guilt and misery that was
suddenly opening at her feet. She knew now,
that Herbert had landed in England on the day
before her second marriage; she knew that he
would rush home at once; she knew that he
would not pass his old friend's door without
stopping for a moment, if only to ask where she
was; she grasped the whole horrible reality!
When Mr. Smith began to speak again, his voice
seemed to mix with the distant noise made by
the romping children, and both sounds became
merged in the roaring of the sea, the sea which
had spared for a harder fate the man who had
loved her, and whose love had been his doom.
Just conscious enough to know that consciousness
was leaving her, she rose hastily, all her
powers concentrated on the effort to leave the