Norman de Vere’s efforts were greatly hampered by the little unconscious burden in his arms, but he would not listen to the shouts of the other. “She is dead, poor little one! She was suffocated in the burning car. Better let her go and save yourself.” “Never! We sink together rather than so cowardly a deed!” Norman de Vere replied above the roar of the water; and by the most heroic struggles he neared the land, where a rope was thrown by friendly hands of excited watchers along the shore. A moment more and safety was assured to them, and a loud, solemn shout of thanksgiving went up from fifty throats for the three solitary survivors of the wrecked train. CHAPTER III. Twenty-four hours later it was night in Jacksonville--night, all lovely with countless stars and a full October moon. “The light of many stars Quivered in tremulous softness on the air, And the night breeze was singing here and there.” Before the gates of a palatial home, whose white walls glimmered like a fairy palace through the dark-green shrubberies of the extensive grounds, stood a line of carriages. The mistress of that Eden-like home had been holding her weekly reception--not a garish ball or a weary crush of uncongenial people, but an assemblage of choice spirits, her most intimate friends, only fifty people all told; and now on the stroke of midnight, after two hours most charmingly spent, they were decorously taking their departure. The echo of their gay voices came floating out on the orange-perfumed air as they lingered on the pillared portico. “Oh, Mrs. de Vere, you must be proud of your husband. Such a hero! They say he saved two lives!” “I am proud of him!” the musical voice of the fair hostess replied, with a note of tenderness breaking through its proud ring; then she bowed good-night to her friends and went back to the deserted drawing-room, around whose door hovered sleepy servants anxious to put out the lights, shut up the house and retire. Their proud mistress paid no attention to them. She pushed to the door, and began to walk slowly up and down the floor, the rich Turkish carpet giving back no echo to the fall of her silken slippers. A woman in the early prime of her rich beauty, thirty-three years old, but looking barely twenty-five--beauty is always young--tall, with a magnificent figure draped in black lace that set off with its somber elegance her peculiar type of beauty.