"Yes, go, dear, if you can bear it. Perhaps, after all, it may not be our darling," said Mrs. Carroll, with a heavy sigh, even while she tried to cheat her heart by the doubt which she felt to be a vain one. So, with Ninon's aid, Xenie changed her wet and drabbled garments for a plain, black silk dress, and a black hat and thick veil. Then, leaving the maid to take care of her mother, Mrs. St. John entered the vehicle and was driven to the place where a group of excited villagers kept watch over a ghastly something upon the sand--the mutilated semblance of a human being that the cruel sea had beaten and buffeted beyond recognition. It was a terrible ordeal for that young, beautiful, and loving sister to pass alone. As she stepped from the vehicle with a wildly-beating heart before the curious scrutiny of the strangers around her, she involuntarily cast a glance around her in the vague, scarce-defined belief that Howard Templeton would be upon the scene. But, no, there was no sign of his presence. Strangers advanced to lead her forward; strangers questioned her; strangers drew back the sheet that had been reverently folded over the dead, and showed her that ghastly form that all believed must have been her sister. She knelt down, trying to keep back her sobs, and looked at the form lying there in the awful majesty of death, with the cold, drizzling rain beating down on its swollen, discolored features. How could that awful thing be Lora--her own, beautiful, tender Lora? And yet, and yet, that beautiful, long, black hair--that fine, embroidered night-robe, hanging in tattered remnants now where the sea had rent it--did they not belong to her sister? Sickening with an awful dread, she touched one of the cold, white hands. It was a ghastly object now, swollen and livid, yet you could see that once it had been a beautiful hand, delicate, dimpled, tapering. And on the slender, third finger, deeply imbedded in the swollen flesh, were two rings--plain, broad, gold bands. Xenie's eyes fell upon them, and with a wild, despairing cry, "Oh, Lora, my sister!" she fell upon the wet sand, in a deep and death-like swoon. CHAPTER XVIII. After leaving Xenie on the seashore, Howard Templeton walked away hurriedly to the little fishing village, a mile distant, and gave the alarm of Lora's disappearance. By a promise of large rewards, he speedily induced a party of men to set out in separate directions to scour the adjacent country for the wanderer. But scarcely had they set out on their mission when someone brought to Howard the news of the corpse that old ocean had cast upon the sands. Dreading, yet fully expecting to behold the dead body of Lora Carroll, Howard Templeton turned back and accompanied the man to the scene. They found a group of excited men and women gathered, on the shore, drawn thither by that nameless fascination which the dreadful and mysterious always possesses for every class of minds whether high or low.