He covered his eyes and did not speak.
'You observed,' said Laura, 'that the writer says it is reported—which leaves room for hope—and we were told that the yacht had gone to the Mediterranean.'
'Which I began to suspect was a ruse, and this awful intelligence seems to prove that I was right,' said Goring, in a very broken voice. 'My poor Alison—my poor Alison.'
He threw himself into a chair, and a silence for some minutes ensued.
Separation and opposition were to be looked forward to, and had been encountered and effected. Even a marriage with Lord Cadbury was not improbable; had not his own heart told him so but a few minutes before? But a catastrophe like this—death—death by drowning—was altogether unlooked for!
Sad and broken was the conversation now between him and Laura Dalton, and they could but surmise and conjecture in vain, while he lingered long with her, as he clung to her presence and society for sympathy.
Drowned—gone—out of the world—away from him, and for ever! It seemed incredible, unrealisable!
He recalled more powerfully than ever now her loving words, her tender and winning expression of eye; again he felt in memory the pressure of her soft little hand, her gentle kisses, and the sea seemed to give up its dead at the only exorcism it will obey—that of a bereaved and faithful heart—and his beloved was with him as on that last time he saw her face.
'Drowned—lost!' he struck his hands together, and often passed one across his eyes, as if to clear away a mist before him.
And he thought—he could think of nothing else—of her delicate and beloved form being the sport of the cold, dark waves—it might be the prey of the dwellers therein—that awful grave, without turf or flowers, which no sunshine would ever brighten to his eyes—the cruel sea that had taken her from him for ever!