This good old commonplace reflection came to Beauchamp while clasping his wife’s hand on the deck of the Esperanza, and looking up at the mountains over the Gulf of Venice.  The impression of that marvellous dawn when he and Renee looked up hand-in-hand was ineffaceable, and pity for the tender hand lost to him wrought in his blood, but Jenny was a peerless wife; and though not in the music of her tongue, or in subtlety of delicate meaning did she excel Renee, as a sober adviser she did, and as a firm speaker; and she had homelier deep eyes, thoughtfuller brows.  The father could speculate with good hope of Jenny’s child.  Cecilia’s wealth, too, had gone over to the Tory party, with her incomprehensible espousal of Tuckham.  Let it go; let all go for dowerless Jenny!

It was (she dared to recollect it in her anguish) Jenny’s choice to go home in the yacht that decided her husband not to make the journey by land in company with the Lydiards.

The voyage was favourable.  Beauchamp had a passing wish to land on the Norman coast, and take Jenny for a day to Tourdestelle.  He deferred to her desire to land baby speedily, now they were so near home.  They ran past Otley river, having sight of Mount Laurels, and on to Bevisham, with swelling sails.  There they parted.  Beauchamp made it one of his ’points of honour’ to deliver the vessel where he had taken her, at her moorings in the Otley.  One of the piermen stood before Beauchamp, and saluting him, said he had been directed to inform him that the Earl of Romfrey was with Colonel Halkett, expecting him at Mount Laurels.  Beauchamp wanted his wife to return in the yacht.  She turned her eyes to Dr. Shrapnel.  It was out of the question that the doctor should think of going.  Husband and wife parted.  She saw him no more.

This is no time to tell of weeping.  The dry chronicle is fittest.  Hard on nine o’clock in the December darkness, the night being still and clear, Jenny’s babe was at her breast, and her ears were awake for the return of her husband.  A man rang at the door of the house, and asked to see Dr. Shrapnel.  This man was Killick, the Radical Sam of politics.  He said to the doctor:  ’I ’m going to hit you sharp, sir; I’ve had it myself:  please put on your hat and come out with me; and close the door.  They mustn’t hear inside.  And here’s a fly.  I knew you’d be off for the finding of the body.  Commander Beauchamp’s drowned.’

Dr. Shrapnel drove round by the shore of the broad water past a great hospital and ruined abbey to Otley village.  Killick had lifted him into the conveyance, and he lifted him out.  Dr. Shrapnel had not spoken a word.  Lights were flaring on the river, illuminating the small craft sombrely.  Men, women, and children crowded the hard and landing-places, the marshy banks and the decks of colliers and trawlers.  Neither Killick nor Dr. Shrapnel questioned them.  The lights were torches and lanterns; the occupation of the boats moving in couples was the dragging for the dead.