Times there were when but for this feature in his loss he might have thanked Heaven that it was death—only death—that separated him from his darling, and not a degrading marriage with that odious old man. And in the extremity of his grief he at times forgot to feel anger at either him or her father for the catastrophe they were the unintentional means of bringing about.
But anger and rage too were coming soon.
When Goring was sitting like a man turned to stone, evincing little sign of life save when he sighed heavily, Laura Dalton kindly laid a hand on his shoulder and said,
'The dépôt is fully formed and in working order now. Leave the command of it to the next officer, young Fleming, and, as you will not be wanted at Aldershot till the spring drills commence, go personally and search for intelligence.'
'Search—where—at the bottom of the sea?' said Goring, huskily.
'The yacht is said to have been sunk off the Maese; people at Maeseland-Sluys or Rotterdam may know something about it. Get leave, go there and inquire, you will be useless here, my dear Goring, and a burden to yourself.'
'Right, I thank you,' he exclaimed, starting up; 'it is a good suggestion.'
'Is not anything better than sitting still a prey to wretchedness and one's miserable thoughts?' she said, feelingly, as she referred, perhaps, to some time or passages in her own past life.
Goring resolved to take measures for trying his too probably useless and hopeless search at once. He promised faithfully to write to Laura Dalton informing her of his progress, and of every fragment of intelligence he could pick up—telegraphing to her in the first place. He pressed her hand, kissed her on the forehead, and in another minute was in his saddle, and galloping back to Aldershot at a break-neck speed—at a rate which would certainly have made his nag remonstrate had it possessed the gift of speech.
He had wealth enough certainly to satisfy all the requirements—the wishes of Sir Ranald Cheyne; but what did it avail him now? It would neither restore the dead nor his own peace of mind. And now he could but do, as he had done a hundred times before, softly open the clasp of her engagement ring—her brother Ellon's ring—and gaze upon her features, and the tiny lock of hair, while his heart was wrung within him.