For him to will was to do, and telling Mrs. Peters he should be absent
from home for a time, he started immediately for Cuyler, which he
reached near the close of the day. Calm and beautiful looked the
waters of the lake on that summer afternoon, and if within their
caverns the ill-fated Marie slept, they kept over her an unruffled
watch and told no tales of her last dying wail to the careworn,
haggard man who stood upon the sandy beach, where they said that she
embarked, and listened attentively while they told him how gay she
seemed that day, and how jestingly she spoke of the dark thunderhead
which even then was mounting the western horizon. They had tried in
vain to find her, and it was probable she had sunk into one of the
unfathomable holes with which the lake was said by some to abound.
Sarah, the waiting-maid, wept passionately, showing that the deceased
must have had some good qualities, or she could not thus have attached
a servant to her.

Looking upon Mr. Browning as a friend of her late mistress, she relied
on him for counsel, and when he advised her immediate return to
Florida, she readily consented, and started on the same day that he
turned his face toward Riverside. They had said to him: "If we find
her, shall we send her to your place?" and with an involuntary shudder
he had answered, "No--oh, no. You must apprise me of it by letter, as
also her Florida friends--but bury her quietly here."

They promised compliance with his wishes, and feeling that a load was
off his mind, he started at once for home. Certainty now was doubly
sure. Marie was dead, and as this conviction became more and more
fixed upon his mind, he began to experience a dread of telling
Rosamond all. Why need she know of it, when the telling it would throw
much censure on himself. She was not a great newspaper reader--she had