"You speak of having heard of Mrs. Winans' troubles," he ventured at last. "Mrs. Conway is one of her friends, I believe?" "Yes, she has known Mrs. Winans for years--loves and admires her greatly." "Perhaps then," pulling his mustache doubtfully, as they drive slowly on, and looking anxious as to how his remark will be received, "perhaps since Winans and the nurse both are so reluctant to carry the news to Mrs. Winans--perhaps Mrs. Conway would be a proper person to break it to her--that is if she would undertake the painful task." "I am sure she would do so; painful as it would be to her I feel she would rather it were her than a stranger; she could tell it more gently than one unaccustomed to Grace--I call her Grace because I have gotten into the familiar habit from hearing Mrs. Conway call her so," she said, apologetically. "Then, if you think so," he makes answer, "I will call on our return and ask her to do so, seeing Winans afterward to let him know of her willingness to assume the unpleasant task. Then, if he thinks best, I will call and take Mrs. Conway to her hotel." They drove back, and broke the sad news to Mrs. Conway. Shocked, surprised, and grieved as she was, she eschewed for once the nerves of a fashionable, and professed herself willing and anxious to go to the bereaved young mother. At seven o'clock that evening the captain called for her. "No tidings of him yet," he said, "and Winans is anxious you should go to her at once and break it with all possible tenderness, with the assurance that he expects at any hour to find the baby and bring it to her. Norah will come back after it is told. Poor lady! fate has done its worst for her." At the door of Grace's room let us pause, dear reader. We have heard the moan of that aching, tortured heart so often, as she quailed before the shafts of fate, that we dare not look on the agony whose remembrance will haunt even the callous heart of the fashionable and world-worn Mrs. Conway through all her future years. It was the agony of Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they were not. CHAPTER XIII. ON THE OCEAN. "Wan was her cheek With hollow watch, her mantle torn, Red grief and mother's hunger in her eye." --TENNYSON'S "PRINCESS." "There is none In all this cold and hollow world, no fount Of deep, strong, deathless love, save that within A mother's heart." --HEMANS. At dusk of the next day Paul Winans walked impatiently up and down the floor of his room at the Arlington House. He was waiting for the appearance of Keene, the best detective in the District, who had promised to meet him at six o'clock that evening, to report progress.