Mr. Fountain got a carriage, and, urging the driver to use speed, was hastily conveyed by the road to a part whence a few steps brought him down to the sea.  He thrust wildly in among the crowd.

“Make way,” said the rough fellows:  they saw he was one of those who had the best right to be there.

He looked, and there, scarce fifty yards from the shore, was the lugger, keel uppermost, drifting in with the tide.  The old man staggered, and was supported by a beach man.

When the wreck came within fifteen yards of the shore, she hung, owing to the under suction, and could get neither way.  The cries of the women broke out afresh at this.  Then half a dozen stout fellows swam in with ropes, and with some difficulty righted her, and in another minute she was hauled ashore.

The crowd rushed upon her.  She was empty!  Not an oar, not a boat-hook—­nothing.  But jammed in between the tiller and the boat they found a purple veil.  The discovery was announced loudly by one of the females, but the consequent outcry was instantly hushed by the men, and the oldest fisherman there took it, and, in a sudden dead and solemn silence, gave it with a world of subdued meaning to Mr. Fountain.

CHAPTER XXI.

MR. FOUNTAIN’S grief was violent; the more so, perhaps, that it was not pure sorrow, but heated with anger and despair.  He had not only lost the creature he loved better than anyone else except himself, but all his plans and all his ambition were upset forever.  I am sorry to say there were moments when he felt indignant with Heaven, and accused its justice.  At other times the virtues of her he had lost came to his recollection, and he wept genuine tears.  Now she was dead he asked himself a question that is sometimes reserved for that occasion, and then asked with bitter regret and idle remorse at its postponement, “What can I do to show my love and respect for her?” The poor old fellow could think of nothing now but to try and recover her body from the sea, and to record her virtues on her tomb.  He employed six men to watch the coast for her along a space of twelve miles, and he went to a marble-cutter and ordered a block of beautiful white marble.  He drew up the record of her virtues himself, and spelled her “Fontaine,” and so settled that question by brute force.

Oh, you may giggle, but men are not most sincere when they are most reasonable, nor most reasonable when most sincere.  When a man’s heart is in a thing, it is in it—­wise or nonsensical, it is all one; so it is no use talking.

I lack words to describe the gloom that fell on Mr. Bazalgette’s home when the sad tidings reached it.  And, indeed, it would be trifling with my reader to hang many more pages with black when he and I both know Lucy Fontaine is alive all the time.