"Dead!" whispered Mrs. Mencke, hoarsely.
"Dead," said Lord Cameron, in an awful tone and with another groan.
Then with a mighty effort he partially recovered his composure, made them sit down, and told them as briefly as he could all about his dreadful day.
He had started out that morning determined to make one last vigorous effort—to spare neither himself, his horse, nor his purse to gain some clew; then, if he learned nothing of the fate of his lost love, he would give up his search and go home to England with his mother.
He followed the coast along the gulf, as he had done a dozen times before, but intending to extend his search farther than he had yet done. He rode many miles, until the heat became so intense that he was forced to turn back without as yet having made any discovery.
Suddenly, however, as he was nearing Mentone, he saw a group of fishermen gathered around something which they had evidently just drawn from the water at the foot of a cliff, along the edge of which the highway ran.
Approaching nearer, he saw what appeared to be a long black object, and knew that it was contemplated with horror by the spectators, for the men's faces were gray and awe-stricken.
A nameless fear seized upon his own heart, and leaping from his horse, he fastened him to a tree, and springing down the cliff with all the speed he could force into his faltering feet, he saw, while a groan of despair burst from him, that the object lying upon the beach was the body of a woman.
Such a horror he had never looked upon before—he hoped never to look upon again.
The woman was clad, not in black, as he had at first thought, but in a dark gray suit trimmed with bands of blue silk. Upon the head was a grey hat, also trimmed with blue, and having a gray wing among the folds of velvet, and wound about this was a thick blue vail.