ying on his back in the dry sands, he had quite forgotten
how he came there. He would have rushed again into the water, but he
could scarcely move his limbs. He actually crawled part of the way
across the links to the college. There he inquired if Miss Fraser was
in the house. The maid assured him that she was in her own room,
whereupon he went home. But he had scarcely gone before they discovered
that her room was deserted, and she nowhere to be found. The shock of
this news rendered it impossible for him to throw off the effects of
his exposure. But he lingered on till Mr Cupples compelled him to go
home. Not even then, however, had her body been recovered. Alec was
convinced that she had got into one of the quicksands; but it was cast
ashore a few days after his departure, and it was well that he did not
see it. He did not learn the fact till many years after.

It soon transpired that she had been out of her mind for some time.
Indeed rumours of the sort had been afloat before. The proximate cause
of her insanity was not certainly known. Some suspicion of the
worthlessness of her lover, some enlightenment as to his perfidy, or
his unaccountable disappearance alone, may have occasioned its
manifestation. But there is great reason to believe that she had a
natural predisposition to it. And having never been taught to provide
for her own mental sustenance, and so nourish a necessary independence,
she had been too ready to squander the wealth of a rich and lovely
nature upon an unworthy person, and the reaction had been madness and
death. But anything was better than marrying Beauchamp.

One strange fact in the case was her inexplicable aversion to
water--either a crude prevision of her coming fate, or, in the
mysterious operations of delirious reasoning, the actual cause of it.
The sea, visible from her window over the dreary flat of the links, may
have fascinated her, and drawn her to her death. Such cases are not
unknown.

During the worst period of Alec's illness, he was ever wandering along
that shore, or swimming in those deadly waters. Sometimes he had laid
hold of the drowning girl and was struggling with her to the surface.
Sometimes he was drawing her in an agony from the swallowing gullet of
a quicksand, which held her fast, and swallowed at her all the time
that he fought to rescue her from its jawless throat.

Annie took her turn in the sick chamber, watching beside the
half-unconscious lad, and listenin