Then her dress became heavily bagged with water, and the love of life
was quenched, and the night of death enveloped her. Without a murmur,
down she went, and the bubbles of her breath came up.
Scudamore uttered a bitter cry, for his heart was almost broken--within
an arm's-length of his love, and she was gone for ever! For the moment
he did not perceive that the clasp of despair must have drowned them
both. Pointing his hands and throwing up his heels, he made one vain
dive after her, then he knew that the pit was too deep for the bottom
to be reached in that way. He swam to the trunk from which Dolly had
leaped, and judging the distance by the sullen ripple, dashed in with
a dive like a terrified frog. Like a bullet he sank to the bottom, and
groped with three fathoms of water above him. Just as his lungs were
giving out, he felt something soft and limp and round. Grasping this
by the trailing hair, he struck mightily up for the surface, and drew a
long breath, and sustained above water the head that fell back upon his
panting breast.
Some three hours later, Dolly Darling lay in her own little bed, as pale
as death, but sleeping the sleep of the world that sees the sun; while
her only sister knelt by her side, weeping the tears of a higher world
than that. "How could I be so brutal, and so hard?" sobbed Faith.
"If father has seen it, will he ever forgive me? His last words
were--'forgive, and love.
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