She feigned not to observe that I was crying. ‘Is not this a fine cabin?’ she exclaimed cheerfully, gazing about her; ‘it is the biggest in the whole row. It is better off for furniture, too, than the others. What a fine large window that is, and how glad I shall be when I am able to keep it open and feel the sweet tropic wind pouring in! I am longing to get on deck, but the doctor is afraid of my catching a chill, and he tells me I must wait until we arrive at a certain latitude. I hope you will often come and sit with me. I will read to you--it does not fatigue me to read aloud, a little at a time.’ ‘Indeed, I will often sit with you,’ said I. ‘Where is your cabin?’ I told her. ‘I hope it is comfortable. But I am sure Captain Ladmore would wish you to be comfortable. He seems a most kind-hearted man, and he has his grief too. What could be sadder than for a sailor, after an absence of many months, to return to his home full of love and expectation, and find his dear ones, his wife and his only child, dead? I felt truly grateful to him when I heard that he did not mean to send you home until you had your memory.’ ‘And I, too, am grateful,’ I exclaimed. ‘I am without money, and in a strange place I should be like one that is blind; and when I arrived, to whom should I turn? What should I be able to do? If I knew, oh, if I but _knew_ that my home was in England!’ The door was quietly opened, and a middle-aged lady entered. She was fresh from the deck, and wore a bonnet and cloak. She was a little woman with soft grey hair, and with some look of her daughter in her. Her gown was of silk, and her jewellery old-fashioned. She did not wait for her daughter to introduce me, but at once approached with her hand advanced, saying she knew who I was; and with slow deliberate speech and soft voice she asked me a number of questions too commonplace to repeat, though they were full of feeling and of good-nature. ‘Is your head badly hurt?’ she asked, gazing with an expression of maternal anxiety at the bandage. ‘I do not think so,’ said I. ‘I have not yet seen the injury. I hope I am not greatly disfigured.’ ‘I do not think that you are disfigured,’ said Miss Lee. ‘The doctor says it is your eyebrow that was hurt.’ ‘I believe the upper part of my nose is injured,’ I said. ‘How was it that you were hurt?’ asked Mrs. Lee, seating herself, and viewing me with a face of tender commiseration. I answered that I supposed the boat’s mast fell upon me when I was unconscious. ‘Might not such a blow account for your losing your memory?’ said she, speaking in a soft, slow voice delightful to listen to. ‘I fear it matters not what took my memory away,’ said I, with a melancholy smile; ‘it is gone.’ ‘It will return,’ said Miss Lee. ‘Do you remember nothing that happened before you were found in the open boat?’ asked Mrs. Lee. ‘Nothing,’ I returned. She looked at her daughter, and tossed her hands.