had been eaten by fishes or abraded to
nothing by the water, but the relics of a gold watch remained, and on the
inside of the case was engraved the name of the maker of her husband's
watch, which she well remembered.

Nicholas, deeply agitated, hastened down to the place and examined the
remains attentively, afterwards going across to Christine, and breaking
the discovery to her. She would not come to view the skeleton, which lay
extended on the grass, not a finger or toe-bone missing, so neatly had
the aquatic operators done their work. Conjecture was directed to the
question how Bellston had got there; and conjecture alone could give an
explanation.

It was supposed that, on his way to call upon her, he had taken a short
cut through the grounds, with which he was naturally very familiar, and
coming to the fall under the trees had expected to find there the plank
which, during his occupancy of the premises with Christine and her
father, he had placed there for crossing into the meads on the other side
instead of wading across as Nicholas had done. Before discovering its
removal he had probably overbalanced himself, and was thus precipitated
into the cascade, the piles beneath the descending current wedging him
between them like the prongs of a pitchfork, and effectually preventing
the rising of his body, over which the weeds grew. Such was the
reasonable supposition concerning the discovery; but proof was never
forthcoming.

'To think,' said Nicholas, when the remains had been decently interred,
and he was again sitting with Christine--though not beside the
waterfall--'to think how we visited him! How we sat over him, hours and
hours, gazing at him, bewailing our fate, when all the time he was
ironically hissing at us from the spot, in an unknown tongue, that we
could marry if we chose!'

She echoed the sentiment with a sigh.

'I have strange fancies,' she said. 'I suppose it must have been my
husband who came back, and not some other man.'

Nicholas felt that there was little doubt. 'Besides--the skeleton,' he
said.

'Yes . . . If it could not have been another person's--but no, of course
it was he.'

'You might have married me on the day we had fixed, and there would have
been no impediment. You would now have been seventeen years my wife, and
we might have had tall sons and daughters.'

'It might have been so,' she murmured.

'Well--is it still better late than never?'

The question was one