She would not come to view the skeleton, which lay extended on the grass, not a finger or toe-bone missing, so neatly had the aquatic operators done their work.

Conjecture was directed to the question how Bellston had got there; and conjecture alone could give an explanation.
It was supposed that, on his way to call upon her, he had taken a short cut through the grounds, with which he was naturally very familiar, and coming to the fall under the trees had expected to find there the plank which, during his occupancy of the premises with Christine and her father, he had placed there for crossing into the meads on the other side instead of wading across as Nicholas had done.

Before discovering its removal he had probably overbalanced himself, and was thus precipitated into the cascade, the piles beneath the descending current wedging him between them like the prongs of a pitchfork, and effectually preventing the rising of his body, over which the weeds grew.

Such was the reasonable supposition concerning the discovery; but proof was never forthcoming.
'To think,' said Nicholas, when the remains had been decently interred, and he was again sitting with Christine--though not beside the waterfall--'to think how we visited him! How we sat over him, hours and hours, gazing at him, bewailing our fate, when all the time he was ironically hissing at us from the spot, in an unknown tongue, that we could marry if we chose!' She echoed the sentiment with a sigh.
'I have strange fancies,' she said.

'I suppose it must have been my husband who came back, and not some other man.' Nicholas felt that there was little doubt.