No human brain can endure a great strain of mental anguish long. A merciful numbness usually seizes it, in which everything grows hazy and unreal, and consequently painless. Agatha felt convinced she was half-asleep, and that she should wake up in her own room at Thorn-hurst or at Kingcombe, and find out everything to be a dream. Or even granting its reality, she seemed to view the whole story like some unconcerned person, or some being from whom this troubled world had passed away, and grown less than nothing and vanity. She gazed down upon herself as it were from a great height, thinking how sad a story it was, and how it would have grieved herself to hear it of any one else. But all her thoughts were disconnected and unnatural. The only tangible feeling was a sort of comfort in remembering the last day they had spent together--in thinking how he loved her, and that, living or dying, he would know how she loved him now. In this state she lay for an indefinite time--a period that had no human measurement. It seemed at once a day and a moment. No counted time could ever appear so like eternity. At last there was a hand upon the door. Mr. Dugdale had come back. Agatha started up, and sat frozen. For her life she could not have uttered a sound. He took her hand, saying, gently: “My dear child!” Surely he could not have spoken so, if--No, in that case his lips would have been paralysed, like her own. “We must bear up yet, little sister. There is a chance.” The flood broke forth. Agatha flung herself on the sofa-cushions, sobbing, weeping, and laughing at once. Duke patted her on the shoulder, walked round her, stood eyeing her with his mild, investigating look, as if he were pondering some great new problem in human nature. Finally, he sat down beside her, and cried likewise. Agatha for the first time spoke naturally. “Thank you, brother--you are a very good brother to me. Now, tell me everything.” “Everything is but little. It's like hanging on a thread--but we'll hold on.” “We will,” said Agatha, setting her lips together, and sitting down firmly to listen. She was in her right senses now. She had undergone the shock, and risen from it another woman. “I wish you would make haste and tell me. You don't know how quiet I am now, nor how much I can bear--only tell me.” Marmaduke began, speaking in fragments hurriedly put together, looking steadily down on his hands, using a brief business tone--just as if every syllable had not been planned by him on his way back, so that the tidings might fall most gradually on the poor wife's ear. “It was indeed the Ardente. Four sailors were picked up yesterday, in one of her boats. They say it's likely that others may have got off in the same way.” “Ah!” That wild sob of thanksgiving! Marmaduke seemed to dread it more than despair. He hastily added: