She was dead! That fiendish man had spoken the truth—Mellen believed it now. Elizabeth was dead, and he had killed her—that noble, grand woman, so resolute in her sacrifice, so determined to save that girl, to preserve him from the hardest shock to his honor and pride, had offered herself up to death, body and soul.
Those few moments of conviction changed him more than many years would have done. The pride and anger which had helped to aid him in his first grief were gone now—he was the wronger—searching for the wife he had driven forth to perish. And she was dead!
No clue—no hope!
He did not touch the shawl, but leaving Tom Fuller, went back and sat down in Elsie's room, with the sick girl's delirious cries smiting his ear, and terrible images rising before his eyes of Elizabeth—dying, dead—drowned and dashed upon some lonely beach, with her cold, open eyes staring blankly in his face.
Tom dropped the shawl in a wet mass at his feet, and walked away without attempting to detain or comfort the stricken husband. He too believed Elizabeth dead, and had no heart to offer consolation. Indeed, the pang of sorrow that this conviction brought took away his own strength.
He walked on, over the wet sands of the beach, ready to cry out with the anguish of this sudden bereavement, when the figure of old Caleb Benson cast its long shadow on the shore.
"Is that you, Mr. Fuller, and alone? I'm mighty pleased to find any one from the Cove—most of all you."
"Do you want me for anything particular?" asked Tom in a husky voice; "if not I—I'm engaged just now."
"Well, yes; I must tell you," said the old man. "I've bin to your house twice—once in the night—I thought mebby I'd see the young gal."
"What is it?" asked Tom, in the impotence of his grief.