four o'clock before
Peter 's face was white and drawn with the anguish of the last few hours . Neither of them could doubt any longer that Mona had been swept off the rock and out to sea . Nothing else could have kept her , they thought . Patty and Philippa had told where they had last seen her , but it was four o'clock before they had come out of school and heard that she was missing . So the crowds clustering about the shore had never any hope of finding her alive . Peter Carne almost fainted , too , with the relief the stranger 's words brought him . The best he had dared to hope for when the knock came was the news that Mona 's body had been washed in .