"It looks like it," admitted Howard, "though, truth to tell, _mon ami_, I do not usually look for such intervention in my affairs. His Satanic Majesty is at present controlling my mundane affairs." "The Lord rules, sir," answered the man, launching his little boat, and trying to make a comfortable and dry seat for his crippled young passenger. The little boat shot out into the blue and sparkling waves, and danced along like a thing of life in the beautiful spring sunshine. "We must go a mile below the village to the home of my friend's mother," Howard explained, as they went along. Then he fell to wondering how Xenie would receive him when he came to her with the glad tidings of Lora's discovery. "How strange that I should carry _her glad_ tidings," he thought. "I am afraid I do not keep to the letter of my vow of hatred as firmly as she does. Would _she_ bring me good news as willingly?" His heart answered no. The keel grated on the shore, and springing out, they went up to the pretty cottage were Mrs. Carroll had lived in strict retirement for several months with her two daughters. But there a terrible disappointment awaited Howard. The cottage was untenanted. They knocked several times, eliciting no response, and finally opening the doors, they found that the occupants had moved out. All was still and silent, and Howard's heart sank heavily as he thought of poor Lora lying in the widow's cot and moaning for the child he had promised to bring her. "They are gone away," said Howard in a more hopeless voice than he knew himself. "We must return to the village. We may hear news from them there." And in his heart he was fervently praying that he would, for how could he return to Lora without the child? They went to the little village where the dead body had been washed upon the sands, and he asked everyone he met if they knew where the occupants of the little cottage had gone. No one could tell him anything of their whereabouts. They had identified the drowned woman as their relative, had buried her, and then quietly left the place, taking Ninon, the little maid, with them. He could not obtain the least clew by which he might follow them and bring them back to the sick girl whom they mourned as dead. Howard did not know what to do now, for he remembered that Dame Videlet had said that the child was the only thing that could save Lora's life. He went into the churchyard and looked at the new-made grave with the cross of white marble, and the simple inscription "Lora, _ætat_ 18." "Perhaps the inscription might come true after all in a few--a very few days," he thought, sadly. CHAPTER XX. Howard did not know what to do: it seemed such a terrible thing to go back to Lora with bad tidings. Perhaps the shock would kill her. Oh, if Mrs. St. John had but waited a little longer! Why need she have hurried away so precipitately? Well, there was no help for it.