"Oh, Jack, Jack!" she cried, twining her white arms tightly around his neck, "you are alive! What happiness for your poor Lora!"
Captain Mainwaring clasped and kissed her with passionate joy, understanding nothing very clearly except the one ecstatic fact that Lora was indeed alive, and having through his deep joy a vague consciousness that Mrs. St. John had somehow terribly wronged and deceived him.
"You see," said Howard Templeton, coldly to Xenie as she stared speechlessly. "Lora has returned to claim her own. Your reign is over."
Lora heard the words, and breaking from the fond clasp of her husband's arms, turned to her sister.
"Oh, Xenie!" she cried, then she stopped short, and her lovely face flushed and her dark eyes beamed.
She had caught sight of the beautiful boy that nestled in the clasp of her sister's arms.
Lora watched him a moment with parted lips and eager eyes.
"Oh!" she breathed, in tones of ineffable tenderness, "how beautiful he is!" then, in low and almost humble accents, she murmured: "Xenie, you will let me kiss him once."
"It is Lora's voice and face," cried Mrs. St. John, half-retreating before her as she advanced, "and yet I saw Lora lying dead—drowned in the cruel sea!"