"I don't understand," he gasped, shaking from head to foot in her arms; and he pressed his face tight against her shoulder to try and recover himself.
"Poor old chap!" said Aunt Dorothy, "how I have upset you! I never meant any of you to see me till you knew. Bob is breaking the news to father and mother gently. We were afraid the shock of joy would be too much for them, so we did not even cable, but came at once. A letter would have got here very little sooner than ourselves."
She talked on in a soft, soothing voice to give the boy time to pull himself together, and all the time she held him close.
"You—you weren't drowned," Eustace managed to blurt out.
"Very nearly, but not quite," was the reply; "my escape was like a miracle. Ah, here comes Bob at last."
"Have I seemed an awful time?" said Bob gently. "It was a difficult thing to do. Come—they are waiting for you."
The pair passed swiftly up the conservatory into the drawing-room.
Herbert was standing by the mantelpiece examining a piece of valuable Sèvres china. As the stranger, accompanied by that white figure, crossed the room to the boudoir, the ornament fell with a crash, to be splintered into twenty pieces on the fender.
"Oh, what was that?" cried Brenda, starting to her feet and gazing after the apparition.
"It's Aunt Dorothy," said Eustace from the conservatory. "She was never drowned at all."