re married he will do perfectly well,
but until that happy event I am afraid that I must take your personal
opinion."

"Oh! very well," said Mary with a sigh; "I will expect you at a quarter
past one."

CHAPTER XVIII

TWO EXPLANATIONS

Accordingly, at a quarter past one on the following day the Colonel
arrived at Seaview, went in to lunch with Mary, and made himself very
amusing and agreeable about the domestic complications of his old
friend, Lady Rawlins and her objectionable husband, and other kindred
topics. Then, adroitly enough, he changed the conversation to the
subject of the great gale, and when he talked of it awhile, said
suddenly:

"I suppose that you have heard of the dreadful thing that happened
here?"

"What dreadful thing?" asked Mary. "I have heard nothing; you must
remember that I have been in a convent where one does not see the
English papers."

"The death of Stella Fregelius," said the Colonel sadly.

"What! the daughter of the new rector--the young lady whom Morris took
off the wreck, and whom I have been longing to ask him about, only I
forgot last night? Do you mean to say that she is dead?"

"Dead as the sea can make her. She was in the old church yonder when
it was swept away, and now lies beneath its ruins in four fathoms of
water."

"How awful!" said Mary. "Tell me about it; how did it happen?"

"Well, through Morris, poor fellow, so far as I can make out, and that
is why he is so dreadfully cut up. You see she helped him to carry on
his experiments with that machine, she sitting in the church and he at
home in the Abbey, with a couple of miles of coast and water between
them. Well, you are a woman of the world, my dear, and you must know
that all this sort of thing means a great deal more intimacy than is
desirable. How far that intimacy went I do not know, and I do not care
to inquire, though for my part I believe that it was a very little way
indeed. Still, Eliza Layard got hold of some cock and bull tale, and you
can guess the rest."

"Perfectly," said Mary in a quiet voice, "if Eliza was concerned in it;
but please go on with the story."

"Well, the gossip came to my ears----"

"Through Eliza?" queried Mary.

"Through Eliza--who said----" and he told her about the incident of
the ulster and the dog-cart, adding that he believed it to be entirely
untrue.

As Mary made no comment he went on: "I forgot to say that Miss Fregelius
seems to have refused to marry Ste