The time has gone by when the two lonely women could take an interest in subjects not connected with their own anxieties.

Now, when hope is fast failing them--now, when their last news of the _Wanderer_ and the _Sea-mew_ is news that is more than two years old--they can read of nothing, they can think of nothing, but dangers and discoveries, losses and rescues in the terrible Polar seas.
Unwillingly, Mrs.Crayford puts her book aside, and opens the piano--Mozart's "Air in A, with Variations," lies open on the instrument.

One after another she plays the lovely melodies, so simply, so purely beautiful, of that unpretending and unrivaled work.

At the close of the ninth Variation (Clara's favorite), she pauses, and turns toward the garden.
"Shall I stop there ?" she asks.
There is no answer.

Has Clara wandered away out of hearing of the music that she loves--the music that harmonizes so subtly with the tender beauty of the night?
Mrs.Crayford rises and advances to the window.
No! there is the white figure standing alone on the slope of the lawn--the head turned away from the house; the face looking out over the calm sea, whose gently rippling waters end in the dim line on the horizon which is the line of the Hampshire coast.
Mrs.Crayford advances as far as the path before the window, and calls to her.
"Clara!" Again there is no answer.