It was when Carolyn was able to walk out upon the piazza that her mother told her that parts of the _Vireo_ had been found and identified unmistakably; they had been washed ashore a few miles down the coast. "It's no use hoping any longer," she said. "I don't hope; I haven't hoped from the very first," was the answer. There was something so strange in the girl's tone that her mother looked at her in a kind of terror. Carolyn, closely wrapped, was sitting in the sunlight on the veranda. "I don't know what you mean," said Mrs. Ffolliott, feebly. "I'm sure I had the strongest hope for several days. It seemed to me they _must_ have been saved somehow; and Rodney was such a good swimmer." "So was Prudence a good swimmer," said Carolyn. "Yes, she was. But I don't see what happened to the boat; they were--" "Mother," said Carolyn, wearily, "don't go on talking like that." "No, no," the mother said, soothingly, but in a perplexed voice; "I won't say anything. We have to bear whatever Providence sends upon us." Carolyn suddenly sat upright in her chair. "Do we?" she asked, fiercely. Then she made an effort to restrain her words. She sank back again upon the seat. "They are not drowned," she said, calmly, as if merely asserting an evident fact. Mrs. Ffolliott came close to her daughter and gently stroked her forehead. "There, there," she said, as if speaking to a child; "we won't talk about it." Then she added, as an afterthought, "But I've ordered the mourning." "The mourning!" Again Carolyn sat upright. This time she laughed. At that laugh the mother drew back a little. "I tell you they are not drowned," the girl repeated. "Then where are they?" "What does it matter where they are? They are together." "Carolyn!" "Yes, together." "Poor child! Don't let's talk of this any longer. When you are stronger, your mind will be stronger, and you won't have these fancies." Carolyn did not reply to these words. She lay silently in her chair, gazing off to the line where the horizon met the ocean. She was thinking, suddenly, that it was here on the piazza that she had been sitting when Leander had found the ring that Prudence had given to Rodney; and then Rodney had come and had asked her, Carolyn Ffolliott, to be his wife. Well, it was all over. But she would not put on black because her lover was faithless. As the weeks went on, nothing more was heard of the two who went out in the _Vireo_ that night; that is, nothing was heard by the people at Savin Hill. But they went nowhere, and saw only a very few friends; and as the season grew on towards winter they saw fewer and fewer. The neighbors had gone back to their city homes. Prudence's mother had left them for the South.