tter reprimands with which he had begun the attack,
as it might be called, which had piqued her to an unexpected
consummation.

A sort of cruelty, an imperiousness, even in his warmth, had
characterized Charles Stow. As a lover he had ever been a bit of a
tyrant; and it might pretty truly have been said that he had stung her
into marriage with him at last. Still more alien from her life did these
reflections operate to make him; and then they would be chased away by an
interval of passionate weeping and mad regret. Finally, there returned
upon the confused mind of the young wife the recollection that she was on
her way homeward, and that the packet would sail in three-quarters of an
hour.

Except the parasol in her hand, all she possessed was at the station
awaiting her onward journey.

She looked in that direction; and, entering one of those undemonstrative
phases so common with her, walked quietly on.

At first she made straight for the railway; but suddenly turning she went
to a shop and wrote an anonymous line announcing his death by drowning to
the only person she had ever heard Charles mention as a relative. Posting
this stealthily, and with a fearful look around her, she seemed to
acquire a terror of the late events, pursuing her way to the station as
if followed by a spectre.

When she got to the office she asked for the luggage that she had left
there on the Saturday as well as the trunk left on the morning just
lapsed. All were put in the boat, and she herself followed. Quickly as
these things had been done, the whole proceeding, nevertheless, had been
almost automatic on Baptista's part, ere she had come to any definite
conclusion on her course.

Just before the bell rang she heard a conversation on the pier, which
removed the last shade of doubt from her mind, if any had existed, that
she was Charles Stow's widow. The sentences were but fragmentary, but
she could easily piece them out.

'A man drowned--swam out too far--was a stranger to the place--people in
boat--saw him go down--couldn't get there in time.'

The news was little more definite than this as yet; though it may as well
be stated once for all that the statement was true. Charley, with the
over-confidence of his nature, had ventured out too far for his strength,
and succumbed in the absence of assistance, his lifeless body being at
that moment suspended in the transparent mid-depths of the bay. His
clothes, however, had merely