He was a large, handsome young man, in the uniform of a sea captain. He wore a large, dark beard, and his brown eyes flashed their eagle gaze around the room, half-anxiously, half-defiantly, until they rested on Mrs. St. John's face where she sat clasping the child in her arms. As she met his gaze she put the child down upon the floor and started up with a low cry. "_Jack Mainwaring!_" she gasped. CHAPTER XXIV. Jack Mainwaring--for it was indeed himself--looked at his sister-in-law with a half-sarcastic smile. He had no love for Lora's relations. He considered that they had treated him badly. He was as well-born as they were, and had been better off until Xenie had married the old millionaire. Yet they had flouted his love for Lora and refused to sanction an engagement between them, hoping to send her to the city and find a richer market for her beauty. So it was with a smile of scorn he contemplated the agitation of the beautiful young widow. "Yes, Mrs. St. John, it is Jack Mainwaring," he said, grimly. "Don't be alarmed, I won't eat you." Xenie regarded him with a stare of haughty amazement. "I do not apprehend such a calamity," she said, icily. "But--I thought you dead." "Yes," he said. "I have passed through some terrible disasters, but luckily I escaped with my life. You will not care to hear about that, though, so I will not digress. I will say that I came up from the country this morning. I went down there yesterday to look for Lora. You will wonder, perhaps, why I am here this morning." Mrs. Carroll had sent the nurse away as soon as he entered. They were alone, she and Xenie and the child, with the handsome, desperate young man, looking as if he hovered on the verge of madness. He had not even spoken to his mother-in-law, who regarded him with a species of terror. Xenie fell back into her seat at the mention of Lora's name. Her lip quivered and her eyes filled. "You--you surely have not come for Lora," she said, and her voice was almost a moan of pain. "You surely must have heard----" "That _my wife_ is dead," he said, and his voice shook so that it was scarcely audible. "Yes, they told me she was drowned. Is it true?" "She--she drowned herself," answered Xenie, in a low tone of passionate despair. She had not asked him to sit down, but Captain Mainwaring dropped down heavily into a chair with a groan of mortal agony, and hid his convulsed face in his hands. "Oh, my God, _no_!" he cried out, wildly. "They did not tell me that. It is not true. It cannot be true. She would not have done that, my little Lora!" "It is all your fault," cried out Mrs. Carroll, confronting him with a pale face and flashing eyes. "You drove her to it, Jack Mainwaring, you broke her heart. You killed her as surely as if your hand had pushed her into that great, cruel sea where she found her death!"