"She is painting a sunset scene," Rex replied in a hard, overstrained tone. "She likes to be quite alone when sketching."
Then he called out: "Mercia! Have you finished?"
"One moment, Rex," a bell-like voice answered from the shingle. "I am nearly through."
"Let us go down," Britton suggested, offering no explanation as to who the lady was.
They crunched down upon the gravel, and mental association of an unconscious variety brought Ainsworth the remembrance of another woman, the woman who had come across their course at Algiers.
"Where are Maud Morris, her husband, and Simpson?" he asked.
"Maud Morris is in Dawson," Britton replied. "The other two are dead."
"Dead!" echoed the lawyer, in genuine amazement.
"Yes," said Rex, "Morris succumbed from drink and exposure at Samson Creek two days ago. He had taken some winter side-trip which was too much for his constitution. They said his wife had the decency to go to him on his death-bed."
"And Simpson?" eagerly inquired Ainsworth.