Joy! as if God himself had answered her wild appeal for help and pardon, a strong, wide plank drifted to her reach. Irene grasped it tightly and threw herself upon it, while a cry of thankfulness broke from her lips. Alone in the dark and rushing waves, her heart filled with relief at the thought of this frail barrier between herself and that mysterious Eternity, to which a moment ago she had blindly hastened.
"If I can only hold on a little while, Elaine will bring me help and rescue," she said to herself, hopefully, and calling her mother by the old familiar sisterly name, for the name of mother was strange to her young lips yet.
Alas, for her springing hopes! Poor Elaine lay white and still in that long, long trance of unconsciousness that followed on her realization of her daughter's suicide. Her locked lips did not unclose to tell her anxious watchers the story of that white form floating on the dark waters, waiting, hoping, praying for rescue, while her strength ebbed, and her arms grew tired and weak, clinging so tightly to that slender plank that floated between her and the death from which she shrunk tremblingly now with all the ardor of a young heart that has found life a goodly thing and fair.
No rescue came. The girl floated farther and farther out to sea in that thick darkness that comes before the dawn. Hours that were long as years seemed to pass over her head, and hope died in her breast as the cruel waves beat and buffeted her tender form.
"I am forgotten and deserted," she moaned. "My mother has raised no alarm. Is it possible she was glad to be rid of me, and held her peace?"
A jeering voice seemed to whisper in her ear:
"It is best for all that you die. Bertha and her mother hated you. You were a stumbling block in your mother's path. You had involved Guy Kenmore in a fatal entanglement. You had no right and no place in the world. Not one whom you have left but will be glad that you are dead."
A cry of despair came from the beautiful girlish lips in the darkness.
"Oh, God, and only yesterday life seemed so beautiful and fair! Now I must die, alone and unregretted! Oh, cruel world, farewell," she cried, for she felt her strength forsaking her, and knew that in a moment more her arms would relax their hold and that she would sink forever amid the engulfing waves.
But in that last perilous moment something occurred that seemed to her dazzled and bewildered senses nothing less than a miracle.