With a savage kick he freed himself and swam swiftly toward the spot where Dianthe’s golden head had last appeared. He was just in time. Grasping the flowing locks with one hand and holding her head above the treacherous water, he swam with her to the bank.

Pretty, innocent, tender-hearted Molly sank never to rise again. Without a word, but with a look of anguished horror, her despairing face was covered by the glistening, greedy waters that lapped so hungrily about the water-lily beds.

As Aubrey bore Dianthe up the bank his fascinated gaze went backward to the spot where he had seen Molly sink. To his surprise and horror, as he gazed the body rose to the surface and floated as did poor Elaine:

“In her right hand the lily,

—All her bright hair streaming down—

—And she herself in white,

All but her face, and that clear-featured face

Was lovely, for she did not seem as dead,

But fast asleep, and lay as tho’ she smiled.”25

Staggering like a drunken man, he made his way to a small cottage up the bank, where a woman, evidently expecting him, opened the door without waiting for his knock.

“Quick! Here she is. Not a word. I will return to-night.” With these words Livingston sped back to the river bank, where he was found by the rescuing party, in a seemingly exhausted condition.

For weeks after these happenings Dianthe lived in another world, unconscious of her own identity. It was early fall before her full faculties were once more with her. The influence which Livingston had acquired rendered her quiescent in his hands, and not too curious as to circumstances of time and place. One day he brought her a letter, stating that Reuel was dead.

Sick at heart, bending beneath the blight that thus unexpectedly fell upon her, the girl gave herself up to grief, and weary of the buffets of Fate, yielded to Aubrey’s persuasions and became his wife. On the night which witnessed Jim Titus’s awful death, they had just returned to Livingston’s ancestral home in Maryland.

It would be desecration to call the passion which Aubrey entertained for Dianthe, love. Yet passion it was—the greatest he had ever known—with its shadow, jealousy. Indifference on the part of his idol could not touch him; she was his other self, and he hated all things that stood between him and his love.