“If it is one of them,” she said to herself, “he ought to know it instantly!  And even if it isn’t, he ought to know.  They will be in a terrible state; somebody should be here, and Herbert has gone to the mountains.  There is no one else.”  She now began to walk more rapidly.  “Yes,” she said, speaking aloud in the intensity of her emotion, “he ought to come, anyway.  I can’t be left here to take any chances.  And if he does not know immediately, he cannot get here today.”

She now directed her steps toward one of the hotels, where she knew there was a telegraph office.

“No matter what has happened, or what has not happened,” she said to herself as she hurried along, “he ought to be here, and he must come!”

The old lady’s hand trembled a good deal as she wrote a telegram to Ralph Haverley, but the operator at the window could read it.  It ran:  “A dreadful disaster here.  Come on immediately.”

When she had finished this business, Miss Panney stood for a few moments on the broad piazza of the hotel, which was deserted, for almost everybody was on the beach.  In spite of her agitation a grim smile came over her face.

“Perhaps that was a little strong,” she thought, “but it has gone now.  And no matter how he finds things, I can prove to him he is needed.  I do not believe he will be too much frightened; men never are, and I will see to it that he has a blessed change in his feelings when he gets here.”

Miss Panney was now allowing to enter her mind the conviction, previously denied admittance, that no one of her three friends would be likely to be swimming far from shore with a party of men.  And, having thus restored herself to something of her usual composure, she went down to the beach to find out who had been drowned.  On the way she met Mrs. Bannister and the two girls, and from them she got her information that two of the persons were believed to be beyond any power of resuscitation, and one of these was a young lady from Boston.

CHAPTER XXXVII

LA FLEUR ASSUMES RESPONSIBILITIES

It was toward the middle of the afternoon that the good La Fleur sat upon a bench under a tree by the side of the noble mansion of Cobhurst.  She was enjoying the scene and allowing her mind to revel in the future she had planned for herself.  She was not even thinking of the dinner.  Presently there drove into the grounds a boy in a bowl-shaped trotting-wagon, bringing a telegram for Mr. Haverley.  La Fleur went to meet him.

“He is not at home,” she said.

“Well,” said the boy, “there is seventy-five cents to pay, and perhaps there is an answer.”

“Are you sure the message was not prepaid?” asked La Fleur, suspiciously.

“Oh, the seventy-five cents is for delivery,” said the boy.  “We deliver free in town, but we can’t come way out here in the country for nothing.  Isn’t there somebody here who can ’tend to it?”