“Oh, no, he isn’t really an old brute!” Diana averred, gently. “He’s just a very ordinary sort of man. Lots of people pretend to be sorry for the deaths of their friends and relatives when they’re not; and half the mourning in the world is sheer hypocrisy! Pa’s a bit of a coward, too—he hates the very thought of death, and when some person he has known commits this last indiscretion of dying, he forgets it as quickly as possible. I don’t blame him, I’m sure. Everyone can’t feel deeply—some people can’t feel at all.”
Here Sophy opened the letter and glanced at it. Presently she looked up.
“Shall I read it to you?” she asked.
Diana nodded. With a small, preparatory cough, which sounded rather like a suppressed giggle, Sophy thereupon read the following effusion:
“Dear Miss Lansing,
“I hardly know how to break to you the news of the sudden and awful tragedy which has wrecked the happiness of our lives! Our beloved only child, our darling daughter Diana is no more! I am aware what a shock this will be to your feelings, for you loved her as a friend, and I wish any words of mine could soften the blow. But I am too stunned myself with grief and horror to write more than just suffices to tell you of the fatal calamity. The poor child was overtaken by a high tide while bathing this morning, and was evidently carried out of her depth. For some hours I have waited and hoped against hope that perhaps, as she was a good swimmer, she might have reached some other part of the shore, but alas! I hear from persons familiar with this coast that the swirl of water in a high tide is so strong and often so erratic that it is doubtful whether even her poor body will ever be found! A sailor has just called here with a melancholy relic—her poor little bathing shoes! He picked up one this morning, soon after the accident, he says, and the other has lately been washed ashore. I cannot go on writing,—my heart is too full! My poor wife is quite beside herself with sorrow. We can only place our trust in God that He will, with time, help us to find consolation for our irreparable loss. We shall not forget your affection for our darling, and shall hope to send you her little wristlet watch as a souvenir.
“Yours, in the deepest affliction,
“James Polydore May.”
Diana had listened with close and almost fascinated attention.
“Of course it isn’t true,” she said, when the reading was finished. “It can’t be true.”
“What can’t be true?” queried Sophy, puckering her well-arched eyebrows.