Accordingly, at a quarter past one on the following day the Colonel arrived at Seaview, went in to lunch with Mary, and made himself very amusing and agreeable about the domestic complications of his old friend, Lady Rawlins and her objectionable husband, and other kindred topics. Then, adroitly enough, he changed the conversation to the subject of the great gale, and when he talked of it awhile, said suddenly: “I suppose that you have heard of the dreadful thing that happened here?” “What dreadful thing?” asked Mary. “I have heard nothing; you must remember that I have been in a convent where one does not see the English papers.” “The death of Stella Fregelius,” said the Colonel sadly. “What! the daughter of the new rector—the young lady whom Morris took off the wreck, and whom I have been longing to ask him about, only I forgot last night? Do you mean to say that she is dead?” “Dead as the sea can make her. She was in the old church yonder when it was swept away, and now lies beneath its ruins in four fathoms of water.” “How awful!” said Mary. “Tell me about it; how did it happen?” “Well, through Morris, poor fellow, so far as I can make out, and that is why he is so dreadfully cut up. You see she helped him to carry on his experiments with that machine, she sitting in the church and he at home in the Abbey, with a couple of miles of coast and water between them. Well, you are a woman of the world, my dear, and you must know that all this sort of thing means a great deal more intimacy than is desirable. How far that intimacy went I do not know, and I do not care to inquire, though for my part I believe that it was a very little way indeed. Still, Eliza Layard got hold of some cock and bull tale, and you can guess the rest.” “Perfectly,” said Mary in a quiet voice, “if Eliza was concerned in it; but please go on with the story.” “Well, the gossip came to my ears——” “Through Eliza?” queried Mary. “Through Eliza—who said——” and he told her about the incident of the ulster and the dog-cart, adding that he believed it to be entirely untrue. As Mary made no comment he went on: “I forgot to say that Miss Fregelius seems to have refused to marry Stephen Layard, who fell violently in love with her, which, to my mind, accounts for some of this gossip. Still, I thought it my duty, and the best thing I could do, to give a friendly hint to the old clergyman, Stella’s father, a funny, withered-up old boy by the way. He seems to have spoken to his daughter rather indiscreetly, whereon she waylaid me as I was walking on the sands and informed me that she had made up her mind to leave this place for London, where she intended to earn her own living by singing and playing on the violin. I must tell you that she played splendidly, and, in my opinion, had one of the most glorious contralto voices that I ever heard.” “She seems to have been a very attractive young woman,” said Mary, in the same quiet, contemplative voice.