They had been four days at sea, and Colin, who had not been ill, had become acquainted with the aspect of all his fellow passengers who were as good sailors as himself. They were going to Leghorn, as the easiest way of reaching Italy; and there were several invalids on board, though none whose means made necessary a passage in the second cabin, of which Colin himself and Lauderdale were the sole occupants. Of the few groups on the quarter-deck who were able to face the gale, Colin had already distinguished one, a young man, a little older than himself, exceedingly pale and worn with illness, accompanied by a girl a year or two younger. The two were so like each other as to leave no doubt that they must be brother and sister, and so unlike as to call forth the compassionate observation of everybody who looked at them. The young lady’s blooming face, delicately round and full, with the perfect outline of health and youth, had been paled at first by the struggle between incipient sea-sickness and the determination not to leave her brother; but by this time--at the cost of whatever private agonies--she had apparently surmounted the common weakness, and was throwing into fuller and fuller certainty, without knowing it, by the contrast of her own bloom, the sentence of death written on his face. When they were on deck, which was the only time that they were visible to Colin, she never left him; holding fast by his arm with an anxious tenacity, not receiving, but giving support; and watching him with incessant, breathless anxiety, as if afraid that he might suddenly drop away from her side. The brother, for his part, had those hollow eyes, set in wide pathetic niches, which are never to be mistaken by those who have once watched beloved eyes widening out into that terrible breadth and calm. He was as pale as if the warm blood of life had already been wrung out of him drop by drop; but, notwithstanding this aspect of death, he was still possessed by a kind of feverish activity, the remains of strength, and seemed less disturbed by the gale than any other passenger. He was on deck at all hours, holding conversations with such of the sailors as he could get at--talking to the captain, who seemed to eschew his society, and to such of his fellow-travellers as were visible there.