She had to stand still with her hands clasped over her throbbing side and wait till the girl came up to her. Then:
"Oh, Heaven, Ninon, where did you get that?" she gasped, looking at the shawl with eyes full of horror, yet afraid to touch it, for it seemed like some dead thing.
"Oh, ma'amselle," faltered the girl stopping short and looking at Xenie's anguished face. "Oh, ma'amselle," she faltered again, and her pretty, piquant face grew white and her black eyes sought the ground, for Ninon, although poor and lowly, had a very tender heart, and she could not bear to see the anguish in the eyes of her young mistress.
"I asked you where did you get that shawl?" Xenie repeated. "It was my sister's shawl. She wore it last night, and now, to-day, she is missing. Did you know that, Ninon?"
"Yes," the girl answered, in her pretty, broken English. She had heard it. A gentleman, a tourist, had brought the news to the village, and the men were all out looking for her.
Would her mistress come to the house? She had something to tell her, but not out there in the cold and wet. She looked fit to drop, indeed she did, declared the voluble, young French girl.
So she half-led, half-dragged Mrs. St. John back to the cottage and into the room where the stricken mother was waiting for tidings of her lost one.
The maid had a sorrowful story to tell.
The waves had cast a dead body up on the beach an hour ago—the corpse of a woman, thinly dressed in white, with long, beautiful black hair flowing loosely and tangled with seaweed.
They could not tell who she was, for—and here Ninon shuddered visibly—the rough waves had battered and swollen her features utterly beyond recognition.