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.