“I hardly know how to break to you the news of the sudden and awful tragedy which has wrecked the happiness of our lives! Our beloved only child, our darling daughter Diana is no more! I am aware what a shock this will be to your feelings, for you loved her as a friend, and I wish any words of mine could soften the blow. But I am too stunned myself with grief and horror to write more than just suffices to tell you of the fatal calamity. The poor child was overtaken by a high tide while bathing this morning, and was evidently carried out of her depth. For some hours I have waited and hoped against hope that perhaps, as she was a good swimmer, she might have reached some other part of the shore, but alas! I hear from persons familiar with this coast that the swirl of water in a high tide is so strong and often so erratic that it is doubtful whether even her poor body will ever be found! A sailor has just called here with a melancholy relic--her poor little bathing shoes! He picked up one this morning, soon after the accident, he says, and the other has lately been washed ashore. I cannot go on writing,--my heart is too full! My poor wife is quite beside herself with sorrow. We can only place our trust in God that He will, with time, help us to find consolation for our irreparable loss. We shall not forget your affection for our darling, and shall hope to send you her little wristlet watch as a souvenir. “Yours, in the deepest affliction, “James Polydore May.” Diana had listened with close and almost fascinated attention. “Of course it isn’t true,” she said, when the reading was finished. “It can’t be true.” “What can’t be true?” queried Sophy, puckering her well-arched eyebrows. “All that!” and Diana waved her hand expressively. “Pa’s not a bit ‘stunned with grief and horror!’ You couldn’t fancy him in such a condition if you tried! And mother is not in the least ‘beside herself.’ She’s probably ordering her mourning. Why, they are already parcelling out my trinkets, and before I’ve been ‘drowned’ twenty-four hours they’re thinking of sending you my wristlet watch by way of an ‘In Memoriam.’ I hope they will,--I should love you to have it! But people who are ‘stunned with grief and horror’ and ‘beside themselves’ are not able to make all these little arrangements so quickly! Ah, Sophy! An hour ago I was actually fancying that perhaps I had behaved cruelly,--there was a stupid, lingering sentiment in my mind that suggested the possible suffering and despair of my father and mother at having lost me!--but after that letter I am reassured! I know I have done the right thing.” Sophy looked at her with a smile. “You are a curious creature!” she said. “Surely Pa expresses himself very touchingly?” “Too touchingly by half!” answered Diana. “Had he really felt the grief he professes to feel, he could not have written to you or to any other friend for several days about it----”