He has heard nothing yet of his belt.

The notes have not been presented at the London bank; nobody in the village has been spending more money than usual; for cunning Tom has contrived already to know how many pints of ale every man of whom he has the least doubt has drunk.
Perhaps, after all, the belt may have been torn off in the life struggle; it may have been for a moment in Grace's hands, and then have been swept into the sea.

What more likely?
And what more likely, in that case, that, sinking by its weight, it is wedged away in some cranny of the rocks?
So spring-tide after spring-tide Tom searches, and all the more carefully because others are searching too, for waifs and strays from the wreck.

Sad relics of mortality he finds at times, as others do: once, even, a dressing-case, full of rings and pins and chains, which belonged, he fancied, to a gay young bride with whom he had waltzed many a time on deck, as they slipped along before the soft trade-wind: but no belt.

He sent the dressing-case to the Lloyd's underwriters, and searched on: but in vain.