His answer was a startling one:
"Lora told me so herself, Mrs. St. John."
Xenie St. John reeled backward a few steps, and stared at the speaker with parted lips from which every vestige of color had retreated, leaving them pallid and bloodless as a ghost's.
"What, under Heaven, do you mean?" she inquired, in a hollow voice.
Captain Mainwaring held up the letter in his hand.
"Do you see this letter?" he said. "It is the last one Lora wrote me. I received it at the last port we touched before our ship was burned. She begged me to come back to her at once if I could, and save her name from the shadow of disgrace. She told me that a child was coming to us in the spring. I—oh, God, I was frantic! I meant to return on the first homeward bound vessel! Then came the terrible fire and loss of the vessel. Days and days we floated on a raft—myself and three others—then we were rescued by a merchant vessel bound for China. We had to go there before we could come home. For months and months I endured inconceivable tortures thinking of my poor young wife's terrible strait. And after all—when I thought I should so soon be at home and kiss her tears away—I find her dead!"
His voice broke, he buried his face in his hands, and, strong man though he was, sobbed aloud like a child.
They watched him, those four—Templeton, himself unseen—the frightened mother and daughter, and the little child with its sweet lips puckered grievingly at the man's loud sobs.
But in a minute the man mastered himself, and went on sadly:
"I was half frantic when I heard that my wife was dead. But, after awhile, I remembered the little child. I said to myself, I will go and seek it. If it be a little girl I will call it Lora. It may comfort me a little for its mother's loss."