the little lonely boat kept rocking
over the sea--the pitiless sea, that returned neither answer nor sign.

Another day--another night: just the same. Once or twice they came on
the track of some vessel; a ship outward or homeward bound, and told
their story; shouting it out, in brief business-like words--how horrible
they sounded! And the ship's people would be seen to come to her side,
stand a while looking at the melancholy little steamer on its
hopeless search--then pass on. All the world seemed passing on slowly,
slowly--leaving them to that blank sea and sky, and to their own
despair.

On the evening of the third day, Marmaduke, who had kept aloof for
several hours, came and stood by his sister-in-law. She was leaning at
the stern, looking shorewards at two columns of rock, which the watery
wear of ages had parted from the cliffs, leaving them set upright in
the sea, a little distance from one another, with the breakers boiling
between.

"There's 'Old Harry and his wife,' as the Dorset people call them. We
are near home now, Agatha."

"Home!" She gasped the word in an agony, and turned her face again
seawards--towards the grey desolate line where the Channel melted away.

"The steamer can't run on much longer without putting in-shore," said
Duke, after an interval.

Agatha almost shrieked; "You are not going to land? We have been out
such a little--little while! And you said yourself the boats would live
a long time in the open Channel."

"But that was three days ago."

"Three days--oh, Heaven!--three days."

And the black, black cloud fell over her; the near vision of an
existence wherein _he_ was not--the going home a widow--or worse,
because she could never have the certainty of widowhood. To be
incessantly watching by day, and starting up at night, with the thought
that he was come! Never to know when, where, or in what manner he died;
to have no last blessing--no last kiss! At the moment, Agatha would have
given her whole future life--nay, her immortal soul--to cling for one
minute round her husband's neck and tell him how she loved him--with
the one perfect love which nothing now could ever alter, weaken, or
estrange.

Mr. Dugdale moved aside. He knew that for this burst of anguish there
was no consolation. After a time, he came and said those few soothing
words which are all that people can say, without being those "miserable
comforters" who only torture the more.

Even then, in that last mo