Thursday passed; Friday, too; then came Saturday, but no Arthur Tresilian, or Lydiard, as she had to call him still at Carn Spern. There came tidings, however, that the _Queen Guinevère_ had left Jersey duly, but had never reached Falmouth. Great was the anxiety, grief, and terror of the little family at Carn Spern; for there had been a severe storm in the Channel, and many ships had been driven ashore about the Lizard and Land's End; but none of these were steamers, and a whisper began to spread abroad that the _Queen Guinevère_ must have foundered and gone down at sea, or some trace of her would have been found upon the coast. But all doubts were speedily resolved, when, on the third day after she was due at Falmouth, Derrick Polkinghorne, coxswain of the Padstow life-boat, discovered her shattered hull sunk and wedged in a chasm of the rocks near the lighthouse on Trevose Head. How she had come to be stranded there on the other side of Cornwall was a mystery to all, unless she had been blown by the late tempest completely round the Land's End, and been forced to run for shelter by St. Ives and Ligger Bay. Much wreckage and many bodies were cast on the beach; but, though none of them proved to be that of Arthur Tresilian--or Mr. Lydiard, as he was called--no doubt remained in the anguished mind of Diana that he had perished, and she at once wrote to his brother Basset, announcing the event, her existence, and the legal claims of herself and her children. All this complication proved very startling to Basset. He knew nothing of his brother's Jersey journey, though he always suspected his secret ties; but, ignoring the latter, he at once put his household in super-mourning, and took possession of Restormel Court as his own, leaving, however, no means untried to prove the death by drowning of Arthur Tresilian, though the name of Lydiard was borne on the list of passengers. The following day saw Diana and her sons, attired in deepest mourning, at the Court, requesting an audience with Mr. Basset Tresilian--her close cap and concealed hair, her long crape weepers, and face deadly with pallor, announcing her recent widowhood, which Basset viewed with a sneer, as with a haggard eye she looked at the stiff ancestral portraits, the cedar carvings of the stately library, the blazing fire, the gleaming tiles, and picturesque furniture of white and gold and crimson velvet. She announced with quiet dignity, yet not without doubt and much perturbation, that she came as the widow of the late Mr. Tresilian, to claim her place, and the places of his children, at Restormel Court. He replied, calmly-- "You have proofs, I presume, of all this, Mrs.--Mrs. Lydiard?" "Mrs. Tresilian, sir!" said she, while her Arthur, in silence and bewilderment, recognised an uncle in the father of his Mona.