How came it there? He had not, so far as he could remember, encountered anybody in his walk along the shore. He looked over the dancing waves, but neither boat nor vessel was visible: he looked up and down the beach: he looked along the craggy summit of the cliffs that rose in frowning grandeur above him, but could see neither man nor woman. He stood, a solitary figure, on a shore that stretched away north and south for many miles.
Regardless of the advancing tide he remained motionless, fascinated by the sight of the hat, his uneasiness deepening each moment. There was something familiar in the grey felt with its once graceful feather bedrenched with the salt spray.
He advanced into the shallow water and lifted the hat for a closer survey. It was rarely that Idris took note of a woman's attire, but he could recall every detail of the dress worn by Mademoiselle Rivière on the day he saw her in the Ravengar Chantry, and he knew that this hat was hers.
His heart, weighted by a terrible idea, sank within him like lead. Half expecting to see a dead form come floating past he glanced again over the surface of the rippling tide.
He now recollected, what he had hitherto forgotten, that there were dangerous quicksands along this part of the coast. Must he believe that Mademoiselle Rivière had become engulfed, and that the tide was now foaming jubilantly over her head?
Once more he looked along the shore, and, as he looked, his pulses thrilled with a sudden and delicious relief; for at the sandy base of a distant cliff he caught sight of a figure lying prone.
Dropping the hat he hurried over the intervening space, and in a moment more was kneeling beside the form of Lorelie Rivière. Beneath her lay the third and lowest of the three ladders that formed the so-called "Stairs of David." She had been either ascending or descending the frail structure, and it had given way. The ladder, worm-eaten with age, had snapped into three portions on touching the sands, and the shock of its fall had deprived her of consciousness.
Her eyelids were closed. Silent and motionless she lay, her breathing so faint as scarce to seem breathing at all, her delicate fingers still clinging to a rung of the fallen ladder.
"Thank heaven, she is alive!" murmured Idris, a great dread rolling from his heart.
He gently detached her fingers from the rung of the ladder, and, tenderly raising her, rested her head upon his knee, turning her face towards the breeze. As he did so, the murmuring sound, that had never once ceased, seemed to swell louder, and his heart almost leaped into his mouth when he noticed how rapidly the tide was advancing.