home; they have found something at the bottom of the
lake. Take him home; and please keep Lady Earle and the women all out
of the way."

"What is it?" cried Lord Earle. "Speak to me, Airlie. What is it?"

"Come away," said Lord Airlie. "The men will not work while we are
here."

They had found something beneath the water; the drags had caught in a
woman's dress; and the men in the boat stood motionless until Lord
Earle was out of sight.

Through the depths of water they saw the gleam of a white, dead face,
and a floating mass of dark hair. They raised the body with reverent
hands. Strong men wept aloud as they did so. One covered the quiet
face, and another wrung the dripping water from the long hair. The sun
shone on, as though in mockery, while they carried the drowned girl
home.

Slowly and with halting steps they carried her through the warm, sunny
park where she was never more to tread, through the bright, sunlit
gardens, through the hall and up the broad staircase, the water
dripping from her hair and falling in large drops, into the pretty
chamber she had so lately quitted full of life and hope. They laid her
on the white bed wherefrom her eyes would never more open to the
morning light, and went away.

"Drowned, drowned! Drowned and dead!" was the cry that went from lip to
lip, till it reached Lord Earle where he sat, trying to soothe his
weeping mother. "Drowned! Quite dead!" was the cry that reached
Lillian, in her sick room, and brought her down pale and trembling.
"Drowned and dead hours ago," were the words that drove Lord Airlie mad
with the bitterness of his woe.

They could not realize it. How had it happened? What had taken her in
the dead of the night to the lake?

They sent messengers right and left to summon doctors in hot haste, as
though human skill could avail her now.

"I must see her," said Lord Airlie. "If you do not wish to kill me,
let me see her."

They allowed him to enter, and Lord Earle and his mother went with him.
None in that room ever forgot his cry--the piercing cry of the strong
man in his agony--as he threw himself by the dead girl's side.

"Beatrice, my love, my darling, why could I not have died for you?"

And then with tears of sympathy they showed him how even in death the
white cold hand grasped his locket, holding it so tightly that no
ordinary foe could remove it.

"In life and in death!" she had said, and she had kept her word.

Chapter XL