“Where was she going when she went out?” Geoffrey asked.

She did not know, but she thought that Miss Beatrice was going out in the canoe.  Leastways she had put on her tennis shoes, which she always wore when she went out boating.

Geoffrey understood it all now.  “Come to the boat-house,” he said.

They went down to the beach, where as yet none were about except a few working people.  Near the boat-house Geoffrey met old Edward walking along with a key in his hand.

“Lord, sir!” he said.  “You here, sir! and in that there queer hat, too.  What is it, sir?”

“Did Miss Beatrice go out in her canoe yesterday evening, Edward?” Geoffrey asked hoarsely.

“No, sir; not as I know on.  My boy locked up the boat-house last night, and I suppose he looked in it first.  What!  You don’t mean to say——­Stop; we’ll soon know.  Oh, Goad! the canoe’s gone!”

There was a silence, an awful silence.  Old Edward broke it.

“She’s drowned, sir—­that’s what she is—­drowned at last; and she the finest woman in Wales.  I knewed she would be one day, poor dear! and she the beauty that she was; and all along of that damned unlucky little craft.  Goad help her!  She’s drowned, I say——­”

Betty burst out into loud weeping at his words.

“Stop that noise, girl,” said Geoffrey, turning his pale face towards her.  “Go back to the Vicarage, and if Mr. Granger comes home before I get back, tell him what we fear.  Edward, send some men to search the shore towards Coed, and some more in a sailing boat.  I will walk towards the Bell Rock—­you can follow me.”

He started and swiftly tramped along the sands, searching the sea with his eye.  On he walked sullenly, desperately striving to hope against hope.  On, past the Dog Rocks, round the long curve of beach till he came to the Amphitheatre.  The tide was high again; he could barely pass the projecting point.  He was round it, and his heart stood still.  For there, bottom upwards, and gently swaying to and fro as the spent waves rocked it, was Beatrice’s canoe.

Sadly, hopelessly, heavily, Geoffrey waded knee deep into the water, and catching the bow of the canoe, dragged it ashore.  There was, or appeared to be, nothing in it; of course he could not expect anything else.  Its occupant had sunk and been carried out to sea by the ebb, whereas the canoe had drifted back to shore with the morning tide.

He reared it upon its end to let the water drain out of it, and from the hollow of the bow arch something came rolling down, something bright and heavy, followed by a brown object.  Hastily he lowered the canoe again, and picked up the bright trinket.  It was his own ring come back to him—­the Roman ring he had given Beatrice, and which she told him in the letter she would wear in her hour of death.  He touched it with his lips and placed it back upon his hand, this token from the beloved dead, vowing that it should never leave his hand in life, and that after death it should be buried on him.  And so it will be, perhaps to be dug up again thousands of years hence, and once more to play a part in the romance of unborn ages.