All was still and silent, and Howard's heart sank heavily as he thought of poor Lora lying in the widow's cot and moaning for the child he had promised to bring her.
"They are gone away," said Howard in a more hopeless voice than he knew himself. "We must return to the village. We may hear news from them there."
And in his heart he was fervently praying that he would, for how could he return to Lora without the child?
They went to the little village where the dead body had been washed upon the sands, and he asked everyone he met if they knew where the occupants of the little cottage had gone.
No one could tell him anything of their whereabouts. They had identified the drowned woman as their relative, had buried her, and then quietly left the place, taking Ninon, the little maid, with them.
He could not obtain the least clew by which he might follow them and bring them back to the sick girl whom they mourned as dead.
Howard did not know what to do now, for he remembered that Dame Videlet had said that the child was the only thing that could save Lora's life.
He went into the churchyard and looked at the new-made grave with the cross of white marble, and the simple inscription "Lora, ætat 18."
"Perhaps the inscription might come true after all in a few—a very few days," he thought, sadly.