'Shocked as I am by this news, which I trust in heaven may be untrue, I am shocked,' said she, 'to be first to break it to you; but you must have learned it in time, and perhaps even more abruptly, and from those less able to sympathise with you.' He covered his eyes and did not speak. 'You observed,' said Laura, 'that the writer says it is _reported_--which leaves room for hope--and we were told that the yacht had gone to the Mediterranean.' 'Which I began to suspect was a ruse, and this awful intelligence seems to prove that I was right,' said Goring, in a very broken voice. 'My poor Alison--my poor Alison.' He threw himself into a chair, and a silence for some minutes ensued. Separation and opposition were to be looked forward to, and had been encountered and effected. Even a marriage with Lord Cadbury was not improbable; had not his own heart told him so but a few minutes before? But a catastrophe like this--death--death by drowning--was altogether unlooked for! Sad and broken was the conversation now between him and Laura Dalton, and they could but surmise and conjecture in vain, while he lingered long with her, as he clung to her presence and society for sympathy. Drowned--gone--out of the world--away from him, and for ever! It seemed incredible, unrealisable! He recalled more powerfully than ever now her loving words, her tender and winning expression of eye; again he felt in memory the pressure of her soft little hand, her gentle kisses, and the sea seemed to give up its dead at the only exorcism it will obey--that of a bereaved and faithful heart--and his beloved was with him as on that last time he saw her face. 'Drowned--lost!' he struck his hands together, and often passed one across his eyes, as if to clear away a mist before him. And he thought--he could think of nothing else--of her delicate and beloved form being the sport of the cold, dark waves--it might be the prey of the dwellers therein--that awful grave, without turf or flowers, which no sunshine would ever brighten to his eyes--the cruel sea that had taken her from him for ever! Times there were when but for this feature in his loss he might have thanked Heaven that it was death--only death--that separated him from his darling, and not a degrading marriage with that odious old man. And in the extremity of his grief he at times forgot to feel anger at either him or her father for the catastrophe they were the unintentional means of bringing about. But anger and rage too were coming soon. When Goring was sitting like a man turned to stone, evincing little sign of life save when he sighed heavily, Laura Dalton kindly laid a hand on his shoulder and said, 'The dépôt is fully formed and in working order now. Leave the command of it to the next officer, young Fleming, and, as you will not be wanted at Aldershot till the spring drills commence, go personally and search for intelligence.' 'Search--where--at the bottom of the sea?' said Goring, huskily.