She started up on her elbow.

“Oh, what is it?  It has been a fearful night.  Has something dreadful happened?” she cried.

Mrs. Langdale’s usually merry face was pale and quiet.  She went quickly to the girl’s side and took her hands into a tight clasp.

“My dear,” she said, “Gerald Fisher asked me to come and tell you.  There has been a wreck in the night.  A vessel ran on to the rocks.  There were three men on board.  They could not reach them with an ordinary boat, and the life-boat was not available.”

“Go on!” gasped Molly, her eyes on her friend’s face.

Mrs. Langdale went on, with an effort.

“Charlie Cleveland—­dear fellow—­went out to them with a rope.  He reached them, brought one safely back, returned for the others—­and—­and—­” Her voice failed.  Her hands tightened upon Molly’s; they were very cold.  “He managed to get to them again,” she whispered, “but—­the rope wasn’t long enough.  He unlashed himself and bound them together.  They pulled them ashore—­both living.  But—­he—­was lost!”

The composure suddenly forsook Mrs. Langdale’s face.  She hid it on Molly’s pillow.

“Oh, Molly, that darling boy!” she cried, with a burst of tears.  “And they say he went to his death—­laughing.”

“He would,” Molly said, in a strange voice.  “I always knew he would.”

She lay back again.  Her face was suddenly pinched and grey, but she felt not the smallest desire to cry.

“I wonder why!” she presently said.  “How I wonder why!”

Mrs. Langdale recovered herself with an effort.  The frozen voice seemed to give her strength.

“Have we any right to ask that?” she whispered.  “No one on this side can ever know.”

“Oh, I think you are wrong,” Molly said.  “We can’t be meant to grope in outer darkness.”

Mrs. Langdale whispered something about “those the gods love.”  She was too broken-down herself to be able to offer any solid comfort.

After a painful silence she got up and busied herself with reviving Molly’s fire, which had almost gone out.  She felt as she had felt only once before in her life, and that had been ten years previously, when her only child had died suddenly.  She wished passionately that she were back in Calcutta with her husband.  She hated the bleak English winter, the cruel English seas.

Molly lay quite still for some time, her young face drawn and stricken.

At length she got up and went to the window.  It was a morning of bleak winds and shifting clouds.  The sea was just visible, very far and dim and grey.  She stood a long while gazing stonily out.

“Can I get you anything, darling?” said Mrs. Langdale’s voice softly behind her.

“No, thank you,” the girl said, without turning.  “Please leave me; that’s all!”

And Mrs. Langdale crept away through the hushed house to her own apartment, there to lay down her head and cry herself exhausted.  Dear, gallant Charlie!  Her heart ached for him.  His irrepressible gaiety, his reckless generosity, these had become the attributes of a hero for ever in her eyes.